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How To Be Less Creative At Work--And Why You Sometimes Should

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Most of the time, the best solution to a problem isn't the most original one.

Creativity is undoubtedly an asset in the workplace, not only just for individuals but also for organizations. It's positively correlated with job performance, leadership potential, career satisfaction, and well-being. In fact, creative people, on average, have even been found to get a leg up in the dating pool.

Still, no human quality is universally beneficial, and even a trait as appealing as creativity can have its downsides, particularly in certain work contexts. Here are a few reasons why being less creative at work might sometimes be a smart move.

It Makes Your Manager's Job Easier

All other things being equal, it's easier to manage employees who are predictable and rule-bound. Even when they say they value innovators, the reality is that many managers are often unwilling to put up with their employees' most eccentric ideas.

What's more, creativity always involves risk and uncertainty, and most managers are wary of this, making them more likely to hire and promote those who do what's expected as opposed to those can produce the unexpected. Likewise, managers themselves are generally more likely to be rewarded if they deliver on expectations, so it's tough to blame them for shying away from creativity.

It Might Be Better For The Company

There are many circumstances where creativity pays off for organizations. But there are other times when companies benefit more from preserving the order of things than from continuing to pursue change. When companies are young and small, creativity helps them innovate and grow—and for that, there are no alternatives to risk-taking. But when they reach a certain size and maturity, most companies drift from experimentation toward stability and process.

This makes sense. While completely suppressing innovation is usually self-destructive, the reality is
that limited creativity is often just fine at this stage of the cycle. Companies may not actually need as much innovation as they think or say they do; more often, the real issue is an inability to put creative ideas into action, not a shortage of them in the first place.

Being Creative Isn't Easy

Creativity is a complex attribute, but most experts define it as the ability to produce novel and useful ideas. Many of us don't appreciate how difficult this is and tend to see ourselves as more creative than we actually are.

But there are really very few totally novel ideas, and most of the time the best solution to a problem isn't the most original one. In fact, most original ideas aren't useful, and most useful ideas aren't original. Only a small number of people—perhaps 5% to 10% of the general population—are likely to generate many useful and original ideas on a regular basis. This requires not just technical expertise (knowledge in a given field) but also general intelligence and the right combination of personality traits (namely, higher ambition, lower conscientiousness, higher extraversion, and higher openness).

If, however, creativity genuinely is your default inclination—if you thrive in unstructured environments, have a constant flow of unusual ideas, and are generally more eccentric and unconventional than your peers—then here are five ways to tamp down your creative instincts when it's wise to do so.

1. Pick A Boring Project Now And Then

Even if you're very creative, certain assignments are just pretty monotonous and uninspiring. In fact, creative people tend to have very specific interests that their most creative ideas revolve around. If your creativity is holding back your productivity and career success, then you can just focus on picking up assignments in those other areas that you aren't passionate about. Those things probably will attract fewer creative people in the first place (which means less competition), making your skill set more of an asset.

2. Team Up With Conscientious Yet Less Creative People

We all change our behavior from one situation to the next, including in response to other people. So if you team up with coworkers who are diligent, process-oriented planners—those you might find dull—they'll likely either inhibit your creativity or find ways to channel it. Most innovations result from teamwork, which often involves uncreative people working together with creative folks, with the former outnumbering the latter by a factor of around four to one.

3. Embrace Order And Predictability

One of the hardest and most painful things for creatives to do is live a structured and predictable life. But it isn't impossible, and sometimes it's worth attempting. Just spend a little more time planning, and tell your colleagues and manager what they can expect from you: Send detailed emails with a timeline for your upcoming work. Then try to stick to it. You may not enjoy it, but it might make your stock rise on your team, so to speak.

4. Say No More Often

Creative people often produce more when they're capable of saying "no" more often. If you pass up some exciting opportunities, you'll be able to focus better on what you're actually expected to produce. Creative people tend to jump from one project to the next, and simply learning to say "no" can be the best antidote to that erratic work style.

5. Find Other Creative Outlets

Even if you succeed at implementing all this advice and still fear that your creative impulses will sometimes get in the way, you can still channel it into other areas of your life—outside of work. Hobbies, artistic and scientific pursuits, and freelance work are just a few. It's commonplace for people to supplement their full-time jobs with other assignments, as outlets for their most creative ideas. So even if your main gig doesn't let you innovate as much as you'd like, you can probably craft one on the side that does.


Apple Watch Nike+ May Be Nike's Reward For Letting FuelBand Die

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Nike conveniently discontinued its plans to make future FuelBands in the months leading up to the Apple Watch launch in 2015.

Apple announced a special edition of its Apple Watch—the Apple Watch Nike+—today, and it might be Nike's reward for exiting the fitness wearable business just as Apple was preparing to enter it.

It's become quite clear that Apple believes the way to the next 20 million Watch sales might be through fitness use cases. The Apple Watch Nike+ offers a different set of sweat-resistant fluoroelastomer bands, which have rows of brightly colored perforations to release heat. It also has run-tracking functionality that's far more advanced than the ones in the Watch's regular Exercise app.

So the new partnership with Nike on a co-branded Apple Watch makes sense. But there might be another reason for the existence of the co-branded device.

Beginning in 2012 Nike produced the FuelBand, a product that many see as the pioneer in the fitness wearable space. With FuelBand, Nike pioneered that idea of getting points (Fuel Points) for workouts and comparing them with friends. My colleague Harry McCracken remembers this as being an impressive device. Apple CEO Tim Cook wore one.

Then, just when Apple was getting ready to launch the first Apple Watch, Nike suddenly discontinued the further development of FuelBand. Nike fired its whole wearable hardware team, and some of them went to work for Apple, including Apple rising star Jay Blahnik.

Nike and Apple have a long history working together, and Nike may have ceded the fitness wearable business to Apple with the agreement that Nike could put its software on the future Watch.

If such an agreement was struck, Nike got its payoff today. A full co-branded Apple Watch pushes Nike into a different category than just another third-party app partner. In some ways the Apple Watch Nike+ may represent the fruition of Nike's vision for the FuelBand.

Alphabet Is Using Google's Ad Technology To Take On ISIS

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An internal incubator is using Google's marketing algorithms to present ISIS sympathizers with different points of view.

An experimental division of Google parent Alphabet is harnessing Google's advertising technology to help stop the spread of ISIS.

"ISIS is a terrorist group unlike any that we've seen before," says Yasmin Green, the head of research and development at Jigsaw, an internal tech incubator focusing on international security issues. "They've been successful in capturing both physical territory and digital territory."

The extremist group has reportedly lost physical territory in Iraq and Syria in recent months, but security experts have long warned that its sophisticated media strategy—involving videos, social media, and even glossy print publications—still enables the group to attract supporters from around the world.

"With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States—spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize—either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack," Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told Congress last year. "The foreign terrorist now has direct access into the United States like never before."

Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, concluded an 8-week pilot program earlier this year, using the same technologies that let commercial advertisers target internet users most likely to be interested in their products to identify users demonstrating sympathies toward ISIS. Then, says Green, online ads pointed them toward content, in both English and Arabic, delivering alternative viewpoints in ways that can actually change their minds.

"They usually made their decision to join [ISIS] based on partial information," she says of those who've joined the terror group in the past. "That's really the bet we're making here, is that with better information, individuals will be empowered to make better choices."

Before launching the test campaign, members of the Jigsaw team did extensive field research, meeting with former ISIS sympathizers and members of targeted communities from Iraq to London, trying to understand everything from how they use mobile phones to what motivated their initial sympathies for the terror group. They then formulated an advertising campaign targeting internet users whose search keywords indicated a potential for radicalization, not just an interest in mainstream news coverage of terrorism or events in the Middle East.

"We were factoring in these types of things: supportive slogans, deferential terms for the Islamic State, preferences for ISIS-produced content," says Green.

For instance, ISIS sympathizers are more likely to use an Arabic-language slogan meaning "remaining and expanding," and they're more likely to use certain terminology for the group itself and political concepts it embraces, like the return of the Islamic political institution known as the caliphate, she says.

A Google advertising tool called the Keyword Planner, which uses Google's substantial data collections to suggest additional relevant keywords to target for an ad campaign, helped find additional terms to target with ads, she says. And while the company didn't do any offline tracking of targeted users, so it can't say how many people may have actually been dissuaded from joining ISIS, it still saw encouraging signs from the pilot.

"Over 8 weeks, in Arabic and English, that this pilot ran, it reached an estimated 320,000 unique individuals, half of which we believed showed signs of positive sentiment toward the Islamic State," Green says. And, she says, the click-through rate of the ads Jigsaw placed were on average 70% higher than others targeting the same keywords.

But simply placing advertisements is only half the battle: Green and her team also had to decide what kinds of content those ads would promote. They quickly decided to curate existing content online, rather than producing new material, but that still left a lot of choices to be made. And sending users to videos or blog posts that just offer "facile parody" of ISIS, use terminology that's seen as overly derogatory, or simply come off as overly preachy will just alienate the people Jigsaw is trying to reach, she says.

"It turns out a lot of the content being produced in this space, I liken it to showing smokers their lungs with nicotine [damage] on the side of the cigarette packet," she says. And even mainstream Western news sources, like the BBC, can be seen as biased by potential ISIS recruits, Green says the team learned through field research.

They decided, instead, to focus on citizen journalism and documentary footage showing the realities of life under ISIS and the struggles the group has been having militarily, along with material highlighting the religious debate around some of the Islamic concepts ISIS cites and testimony from former ISIS supporters who had left the group.

"Those were among the most compelling," Green says. "These were individuals who had just come back—they were until very recently subscribing to ISIS ideology."

Ultimately, users targeted by the ads collectively watched about 500,000 minutes of video, she says. And as the project expands, Green hopes to work with external funding organizations and advertising groups to expand to other languages and potentially even enable deradicalization experts to work one-on-one with potential ISIS recruits who are posting on YouTube and social media networks.

The efforts may one day expand to combat other forms of extremism, such as white supremacist movements, she says. Since shortly after it was founded in 2010 as Google Ideas, the group has been in contact with former extremists of a variety of stripes, looking to learn why young people are drawn to such movements.

Jigsaw's project isn't the only effort to focus on countering ISIS propaganda: Obama administration officials have met with executives from Hollywood movie studios and social media companies like Snapchat and Facebook to discuss ways to limit and counter the group's global reach. And while the pilot program arose within Alphabet, a company central to internet advertising, Green says there's no reason a similar project couldn't begin elsewhere.

"There's no really secret sauce here," she says. "This is really just about setting the target audience as those who already engaged, informing the campaigns with insights from defectors and former members, and getting the insights to design really good campaigns."

How Two Companies Hooked Customers On Products They Rarely Use

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People rarely buy homes or cars, but even those industries can tap into the power of habit.

Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet, has a quirky way of deciding which companies he likes. It's called the "toothbrush test." According to the New York Times, when Page looks at a potential company to acquire, he wants to know if the product is, like a toothbrush, "something you will use once or twice a day."

Page clearly understands habits. Frequently used products form "sticky" customer habits. But what if your product doesn't pass Page's toothbrush test? Perhaps you'd like people to use your product or service frequently, but it just doesn't make sense for them to do so. Is your business dead in the water?

How Often Do You Buy A House?

A few months ago, I was hired to present at a gathering of 700 real estate agents. The master of ceremonies made a gracious introduction, saying, "Now we'll hear from Nir Eyal, an expert on consumer habits. Nir is going to teach us how to make home buying and selling into a habit!"

The breath went out of me like I'd been punched in the solar plexus.

I trudged on stage and gripped the podium. "I'm sorry," I said. "There must have been some misunderstanding." I paused to catch my breath. "There is no way I am going to teach you how to make home buying and selling into a habit, because it has no chance of ever becoming a habit."

I glanced over my shoulder, trying to find the woman who'd introduced me, hoping she'd save me, but she was already slinking off the stage. I was stuck. I hadn't prepared another talk, so I gave the planned presentation, based on my book.

I explained that home buying and selling doesn't occur nearly often enough to become a habit. Furthermore, the very definition of a habit—a behavior done with little or no conscious thought—is the antithesis of the kind of overthinking that real estate transactions inspire.

As I finished my talk, I expected crickets. Instead, I received a generous round of applause, and a small mob of real estate agents gathered around me as I got off the stage. As the lights came up and the convention adjourned for a break, the agents peppered me with questions. They all had ideas to share.

"I know home buying and selling can't be a habit," one woman spoke up. "That's fine. But what if I make a habit of doing something else related to home buying and selling?"

I was intrigued.

Soon, other agents chimed in and built upon each other's ideas, coming up with all sorts of ways to keep potential customers engaged. Their ideas helped me realize that even rarely used products and services can keep customers hooked.

There are at least two ways to build a habit around an infrequently used product: content and community. But there's an important caveat to make: Not every business needs to be habit forming. There are lots of ways to bring customers back, and many companies succeed without relying on customers' habits. They buy advertising, spend money on search engine optimization, or open a storefront to capture customers' attention as they walk by.

But traditional methods of keeping customers engaged force businesses to rent space on someone else's website, search engine, or street corner. By contrast, owning a customer's habit is an asset that pays you. Here's a look at two companies that have figured this out, through two different yet effective means.

Y Combinator's Content Habit

"Every time someone in my neighborhood has personal finance questions, I want them to come to me," one real estate agent told me after my talk. Her plan was to create a site and app full of articles, videos, and financial calculators to form a content habit with potential home buyers and sellers. "What if I write new articles or post the ones I find online about topics I know people have on their minds?" she asked.

I nodded in agreement. If she could build potential customers' habits of consulting her site, she could increase the odds of them doing business with her when it finally did come time to buy or sell their homes. She'd stumbled upon a tactic used by the renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator. Though it's sealed its reputation at the top of its industry, Y Combinator was once a newcomer competing for attention with traditional venture capital funds and angel investors. Even today, its success depends on finding the best founders, which means staying top of mind. But founders don't apply to Y Combinator frequently enough for it to be a habit.

How does the startup accelerator stay connected to the tech community? The answer is content. Hacker News, a content aggregation site owned by Y Combinator, was visited 18.6 million times in July 2016. Hacker News went online in 2007, less than two years after Y Combinator's founding, and has been a fixture of the Silicon Valley tech scene ever since. Though it's not Y Combinator's core business, Hacker News has successfully drawn attention to the accelerator by forming a content-consumption habit.

Hacker News built a content-consumption habit for Y Combinator.

The constantly changing list of posts has all the elements of a habit-forming product. Users check the site daily—between coding sessions or during coffee breaks—to find the latest industry news and happenings. As they browse, users accrue a reputation score for their contributions to the site.

Though Hacker News is an "autonomous unit," according to the company, it's clear the site is still an arm of Y Combinator. The top left corner of Hacker News features the Y Combinator logo as the home button, and a link at the bottom of the page invites visitors to "Apply to YC." But the hooks in Hacker News go even deeper. As TechCrunch reported, "Hacker News has a strong affiliation with Y Combinator . . . Founders usually all create a Hacker News account when they apply, and that user name is the founder's identity at Y Combinator." Recently, Y Combinator doubled down on its content strategy. In November, the accelerator launched The Macro, a content site featuring original writing by members of the Y Combinator team.

It's clear Y Combinator has profited from the popularity of Hacker News. Despite the fact that it isn't the primary way Y Combinator makes money, the content-consumption habit fills the funnel with potential applicants and has become a valuable asset in its own right.

Hallmark's Homegrown Community

Another way infrequently used products form a habit is by building a community. Let's say you've got a product people tend to buy just once a year—like Christmas ornaments. One might assume interest in such a product is nil for 11 months out of the year.

But for members of Hallmark's Keepsake Ornament Club (or "KOC" to members), engagement with (and revenue from) the seasonal product goes strong year-round. Though the group is mostly unknown to outsiders, the KOC boasts more than 400 local chapters across the country. A recent look at the club's official Facebook page showed photos of members queuing in long lines for a chance to meet with the artists behind some of their favorite ornaments. The people in the photos aren't wearing heavy coats to protect them from the December snow; they're wearing shorts—the Christmas-themed event took place in the middle of August.

The line for a Hallmark Christmas ornament event in August.[Photo: Hallmark Keepsake Ornament Club, Facebook]

Hallmark has cultivated a thriving community around its seasonal products, but the secret of the club's success is about more than the ornaments. Local chapters of the KOC are organized by neighborhood Hallmark stores as well as the national organization. Similar to a civic group, many of the local affiliates hold frequent gatherings and social events.

Linda, an employee of a Hallmark store in Pleasanton, California, who preferred I didn't use her last name, told me her store's club has 25 members and is considered small. (Some clubs have hundreds of devotees.) Still, Linda's group meets regularly and members trade ornaments, as well as banter, via email. A privilege available exclusively to club members, Linda told me, was the chance to package new ornaments as they arrive at the store. Some might consider the job manual labor, but to club members, it's a treat.

Collecting is a major draw for KOC members, and there's actually a special psychology associated with collectibles that isn't easily replicated in other industries. However, the product facilitates something else club members really want—social interaction.

Likewise, after my talk to the real estate agents, a gentleman told me about an idea he had for using community to build a habit for his business. "What if I start an email list or website for people who live in my neighborhood?" he proposed. "Every couple days I'll let people know what's going on in their area—local happenings, high school sports, things like that."

"Sure!" I told him. He went on, "Then, if they want to go to games together, they'll coordinate through the online group." I loved the idea and suggested that if people depended on him as the hub to connect his community, his real estate business may be in great shape.

It's All About Engagement

When it comes to designing products people love, far too many entrepreneurs focus on getting customers to check out instead of getting them to check in. There's no doubt that a frequently used product like Facebook, Slack, or Snapchat has an easier time of changing consumer habits. However, habits can still help companies that might make a sale to consumers every few months or years.

Companies looking to build consumer habits should remember that monetization is a result of engagement—not necessarily the other way around. For a financial services firm, a real estate agent, or a seasonal business, buying the product or service might not be a habit. But creating related habits around content and community can pay off in reputation, satisfaction, and—ultimately—sales.


Nir Eval is the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and blogs about the psychology of products at NirAndFar.com. Follow Nir on Twitter at @nireyal.

In The Olympics For Cyborgs, These Are The Toughest Events

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In the Cybathlon, people with disabilities compete against each other at daily tasks in an effort to kickstart innovation in prosthetics.

Millions of people worldwide rely on orthotics, prosthetics, wheelchairs, and other assistive devices to improve their quality of life. In the United States alone, there are more than 1.6 million people with limb amputations. The World Health Organization estimates the number of wheelchair users to be about 65 million people worldwide.

It is important to improve the daily lives of people with disabilities or physical weaknesses, and allow them to be more independent. Unfortunately, current assistive technology does not fully address their needs. Wheelchairs cannot climb stairs; arm prostheses do not enable versatile hand functions. Powered support devices have limited battery life. The list goes on and on.

Many people need help climbing stairs.[Photo: ETH Zurich/Alessandro Della Bella, Author provided]

People with disabilities are often disappointed with their devices' performance, and choose not to use them. The main objection is that designs ignore user needs, such as individual preferences for device appearance, sizing, and fitting for comfort and function, effort and time required to put on and take off, and device durability and weight.

Beyond the design issues, these tools are expensive. Cost shuts many people out of using them, regardless of how well they work. And stairs, steep ramps, narrow doorways and low tables can make the use of assistive technologies very cumbersome or even impossible.

It is an industry ripe for innovation. To encourage this work, I have founded a new kind of competition promoting the development of useful technologies. In the Paralympics, parathletes aim to achieve maximum performance in sporting challenges. In our new contest, the Cybathlon, people with physical disabilities will compete against each other at tasks of daily life, with the aid of advanced assistive devices—including robotic ones.

Focusing On Teamwork And Technology

In the Cybathlon, what's being tested is not just the abilities of human athletes, nor only the equipment they use. Rather, it's their symbiosis, balancing good technical performance of the device, and its control by the athlete.

Competitors will face off in six disciplines, for people with either limb amputations or limb paralysis of varying degrees, such as occurs after a spinal cord injury. We'll organize a race focused on each of these technologies: powered leg prostheses, powered arm prostheses, functional electrical stimulation (FES) driven bikes, powered wheelchairs, and powered exoskeletons. The sixth competition is a racing game with virtual avatars controlled by brain-computer interfaces.

Teams work together: a pilot in control, with others supporting and operating the technology.[Photo: ETH Zurich/Alessandro Della Bella, Author provided]

We ran test sessions in July 2015, and have slated the full competition for October 8 in Zurich. The devices involved can be prototypes developed by research labs or companies, or commercially available products. Competitors will be called pilots, as they must control a device that enhances their mobility.

Competing teams each consist of a pilot, scientists and technology providers, making the Cybathon also a competition among companies and research laboratories. As a result there are two awards for each competition's winning team: a medal for the pilot and a cup for the company or lab that made the device.

The Six Competitions

The competitions will simulate challenges people with disabilities face in daily life—situations that non-disabled people don't think twice about but that can be insurmountable for others.

Powered prosthetic legs Most leg prostheses require their users to swing the artificial leg just so, to properly align the knee, lower leg, and foot. And they cannot transfer muscular power through the knee, using thigh muscles to help climb stairs, for example.

One of the best unpowered-knee prostheses, offering a quite symmetrical gait compared to most devices.

Powered leg prostheses can provide that missing power, but they are difficult to control unless the motor understands how the user wants to move. And even the best batteries are either too heavy or too short-lived to be a real solution. Our race will challenge pilots with above-knee amputations to use powered prosthetic legs to walk up and down stairs, stand up from a seated position, and otherwise navigate a complicated environment.

Two-handed jobs needing fine motor skills can be very hard to complete.[Photo: ETH Zurich/Alessandro Della Bella, Author provided]

Powered hands and arms Two-handed jobs, requiring either strength (like carrying a heavy box) or specific fine motor skills (like opening a small jar of jam) are challenging with even the best upper-arm prostheses. As a result, up to 60% of people with upper-limb amputation don't use their prosthetic device very much or even at all. People are much less likely to reject more advanced devices, like body-powered or electric ones. Pilots with amputations at or above the lower arm will use motorized prosthetic hands and arms to complete various household and food preparation tasks.

Assisted cycling People with complete paraplegia don't lose their muscles; they just lose the ability to control them. A technology called functional electrical stimulation (FES) can restore some of this function, sending electricity into otherwise dormant nerves to activate muscles. FES technology has been used for decades. But the systems take a long time to set up, don't produce much muscle force, and tire out muscles quickly.

Surgically implanted systems give more specific control of particular muscles and higher force output. But they are expensive and invasive, and carry more risks than external FES devices that are merely strapped to a person's body. For these reasons, doctors and patients don't often use FES technology.

In the Cybathlon, pilots with complete paraplegia will compete in a bike race, using FES devices to fire their leg muscles to drive the pedals.

Helping cyclists pedal with functional electrical stimulation.

Powered wheelchairs Despite the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws and regulations, public buildings are still hard to enter and navigate in wheelchairs. Most outdoor devices are too bulky and not agile enough for indoor use; commercial indoor wheelchairs can't travel over uneven terrain or steps. So-called intelligent or smart wheelchairs, which can autonomously navigate in known environments have been available for decades, but are very expensive and used by relatively few people.

Wheelchairs are becoming more powerful, but often their control systems are neither as effective nor as comfortable as they could be. To push development of these functions, pilots with paralysis will take powered wheelchairs through an obstacle course with ramps, stairs, bends, doors, and uneven terrain.

Powered wheelchair racing.

Powered exoskeletons An alternative to wheelchairs are exoskeletal devices that help people walk. However, batteries only last a few hours, and the equipment is very bulky and heavy. Most of the commercially available multi-joint exoskeletons weigh between 46 and 62 pounds (21–28 kg). One device, called "REX" weighs nearly 88 pounds!

Current commercial systems are so limited that they can't even climb slopes or stairs. An obstacle course will test pilots' and teams' abilities to develop systems that can move through difficult areas.

Moving with powered exoskeletons.

Navigating by brain power In the brain-computer interface (BCI) race, pilots with paralysis of all four limbs will control a virtual avatar in a racing game displayed on a computer screen. The best pilots will be able to make their brain signals emit three different commands to overcome three different kinds of virtual obstacles. BCI technology is becoming more popular, but most systems take a long time to set up, can be uncomfortable, and don't function well outside the lab. That has prevented its broad use in daily life.

Racing with brain power alone.

The Cybathlon will bring together people with disabilities or physical weaknesses, researchers and developers, governments and other agencies that fund services and research. It will also showcase the importance of this work to the general public. Our hope is that over time, these devices will become more affordable and more functional.

Unlike the Paralympic Games, pilots can use any technical aids they need, as long as they are safe. That enables people with more severe disabilities to compete. The goal is not to be the fastest or the strongest participant; rather it's to be the most skilled pilot who can use advanced technologies to best overcome the challenges of everyday life.

A version of this essay originally appeared at The Conversation

Always Settling In Negotiations? This Strategy's For You

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If you're afraid of caving, this strategy can prepare you to stay firm before you sit down at the negotiating table.

Deadlines, deliverables, costs, your market value—these things might be top of mind for you when you're negotiating a new deal or a job offer. But there's actually more than that on the table. Or, to put it another way, there's plenty that's not on any proverbial table at all.

This other category of negotiating criteria is less tangible because it has to do with feelings, not facts. There's a huge emotional component that each of us brings to negotiations, whether we realize it or not. And the ability to recognize those feelings and manage (not repress) them is as critical to your success as being able to calculate costs and nail deadlines. When you lack that self-knowledge, you risk selling yourself short or caving too easily in high-stakes discussions.

For independent workers, this happens the most while negotiating rates. Instead of really calculating a rate that lets us profit from our work, we often agree to the amount we think will get the contract signed and meet our immediate financial needs. I've coached people who fall into this trap, I've seen companies do it, and I've done it myself as a sole proprietor and (while I hate to admit it) as a leader, too.

In every instance, we succumb to an unacknowledged panic—an emotional reason to accept less, not a rational one. Beating that impulse means mastering our feelings.

Prepare Yourself Beforehand

How can you protect yourself from your own worst impulses? Two hours before your meeting, do this exercise:

  1. At the top of a page, write down the price you require in order to profit from your work—not just break even.
  2. At the bottom of the page, draw a firm line.
  3. Back at the top, below your profit price, list all the possible objections you can think of. (There's usually a multitude, and while I haven't heard all of them through my career, I've heard some doozies.) Your task now is to list every single one you can imagine, including anything as ridiculous as the one I got years ago: "My brother-in-law will do it for a case of beer."
  4. Then list how you're going to respond to every single one of those objections. And, yes, you can write, "Sounds like your brother-in-law is an alcoholic!"—though, of course, you'll never say it.
  5. Finally, on the bottom line, write your price again. Because your price is the bottom line.

An "Aha" Moment To Avoid

The usefulness of this exercise was brought home to me during the last few months as I coached a professional artist who'd identified a consistent problem in her work life: She resented how little she was paid for all the damn work she put in.

Sara paints murals for clients who own commercial buildings. She really loves what she does, but she came to me because she wanted to earn more money. "Painters like me are undervalued," she told me in our first coaching session.

I wasn't opposed to that idea, but I knew that only Sara could do something about how much Sara was paid. So I asked her just to consider the idea that she might be contributing to the problematic relationships she always seemed to find herself in.

A while later, Sara was negotiating a new deal around the same time her car payment was due: Her "aha" moment had arrived. "I was across the table from the client, we were looking at my sketches, but the only thing on my mind was that I had to come up with $400 every month," she admitted.

"When we got down to price, I felt this cramp in my gut. I did a quickie calculation of how long the mural would take, how many car payments that would be, and asked for a grand total of $800."

For what was really a $2,000 mural.

Never Just The Facts

When negotiating a new deal, everybody focuses on the facts. Sara wasn't wrong to do that—they do have to be worked out, and they're comfortingly concrete, undeniable, measurable, and relatively easy to understand and to justify. It's easier to explain (first and foremost to yourself) where that $800 will go once you get it and a lot harder to pin down why the job is actually worth another $1,200 on top of that.

Feelings, on the other hand, are abstract, hard to pin down, and impossible to quantify. They're about relationship, fairness, and entitlement—old hurts and future hopes. They're also about where you think the power in the negotiation lies.

If you don't learn to acknowledge them and work with them, they have the power to disempower your own deals. So set aside a couple of hours before you sit down to negotiate and get clear on every imaginable objection first. Once you're really committed to your bottom line, your prospective client, business partner, or hiring manager will need to commit to it, too.

Otherwise, no deal—and no hard feelings.


Ted Leonhardt is a designer and illustrator, and former global creative director of FITCH Worldwide. His specialized approach to negotiation helps creative workers build on their strengths and own their value in the marketplace. Follow Ted on Twitter at @tedleonhardt.

Meet The Woman Behind Britney Spears's Reinvention

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Karen Kwak, the executive producer for Glory, finally gives Britney Spears a chance to live up to that name.

In 2007, even the most die-hard Britney Spears fans wondered whether the reigning Princess of Pop still wanted the title anointed upon her at age 16. After all, the most disturbing images of that year cling stubbornly to the mind, from her public meltdown against paparazzi to the infamous VMA performance that might have ended her career. Of course, she immediately but narrowly rebounded as only she could: with Blackout, an album many regard as her best.

Yet in the years that followed, Spears failed to ride that momentum, producing a handful of moderate hits from albums that never quite hit the mark. By the time 2013's critically panned Britney Jean arrived, she had mostly overcome those frightening images from her past, offering instead the picture of a healthy 34-year-old who lounges poolside with her family and takes her sons out for Sunday morning hikes. She had successfully made the case for Britney Spears, the mom and Instagram persona—but not Britney Spears, the pop star.

That may change now with Glory, her ninth studio album, which just gave Spears's side gig as the world's biggest pop star a jolt of much-needed goodwill beyond the enduring nostalgia that's arguably kept her afloat over much of the last decade. Hailed as a "masterpiece" and her "most adventurous album in a decade,"Glory has seemingly accomplished what the three records before it had hoped for: the rehabilitation of the nearly 20-year-old Britney Spears brand.

Much of the credit should go to Karen Kwak, the industry veteran who served as executive producer for Glory. Hired last summer after the widely derided single "Pretty Girls"—"That's kind of an unofficial disclaimer, huh?" she says—she arrived at the precise moment when Spears seemed destined to take the Madonna route of latching onto younger, hotter artists ("Pretty Girls" featured Iggy Azalea, whose fading public persona did little to boost the song's reception) and churning out derivative forms of modern pop music for a shot at relevancy. Kwak seemed charged with cleaning up that mess.

"It was a definite pinch-me moment," she says of coming aboard Spears's team. Yet more than that, she faced a unique challenge of branding in pop music—not just bouncing back from a poorly received single, but also pivoting from a culmination of issues including a breakdown, legal problems, and the simple question of whether or not Spears longed to remain a celebrity. A court-approved conservatorship, which puts her father and a lawyer in charge of key personal and financial decisions, may very well be what keeps Spears—who would rather be remembered as a mother than an artist—in the recording studio and onstage for her popular Las Vegas show.

Still, in a time when pop stars such as Taylor Swift conduct damage control publicly on Instagram, Kwak had the task of putting together an album that would do the same for Spears.

The key to reinventing Britney Spears for 2016, Kwak says, was to not reinvent at all. At first, she wanted to think of Glory as a standalone product, but soon sensed that was impossible. Recapturing the playfulness absent on Spears's past few records would mean getting back to basics. "We took references from Blackout, but that wasn't intentional," she says. "What we did use was the Britney I knew from the outside, before we worked together. The Britney that was always taking chances, always changing, and always doing something new."

That being said, Kwak kept the album forward facing. "We didn't talk about the past," she says, hesitating to comment on the extent to which Britney Jean—considered the blankest, least Britney Spears-sounding album to date—affected Glory's creative process. "I can't speak for the previous albums. But here, she seemed like she was present and actually having fun."

That much is apparent over the course of 17 tracks, whether on the lead single and spin class fave "Make Me . . ." or the Top 40-ready "Do You Wanna Come Over?" More than any recent album, Glory actually sounds like Britney Spears, putting her front and center in a way that she hasn't been in over a decade. Where she was once processed and robotic beyond recognition, she's reassumed a sense of self and control over her music.

Spears's involvement and "deep commitment" to the project yielded two of the album's most experimental tracks: the warbling "Private Show" and the sung-entirely-in-French "Coupure Électrique." Kwak says the apparent randomness of the former is a product of Spears's diverse music tastes, while the latter came about when she, apropos of nothing, decided, "I want to sing a French song." Yet however bizarre the two may seem, they remain quintessentially Britney; "Private Show" showcases all the signature vocal tics lauded and critiqued over the years, and "Coupure Électrique" translates, winkingly, to "blackout."

The creative output seems a direct result of Kwak giving Spears room to play and be herself, while still keeping her in line with the demands of a major label release. "I was a filter for her, dealing with all the writers and producers who wanted to work with her," she says. "My job was creating a process committed to good music and making sure she enjoyed doing what she loves." That, and getting Spears out of the studio early enough daily that she could pick her boys up from school.

Though she says they never set out to create a number one song, Kwak—who has also served as artist and repertoire (A&R) for Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Frank Ocean—has a keen enough sense of hit-making that she produced a Britney Spears album that wouldn't sound out of place in 2003 or 2016. She takes particular issue with the critique that Gloryisn't personal enough, at least not in the way of "Everytime" or "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman." "This is a reflection of where she is after 20 years of everything being scrutinized," she says. "If she's in a happy place, in a good place, then I think that's okay."

Certainly Glory shows Spears as she is today, every bit as fun and random as her Instagram account, which mixes selfies and behind-the-scenes pictures with inspirational quotes and shoehorned promotional material. If Circus, Femme Fatale, and Britney Jean raised any doubts about her remaining interest in pop stardom, then Glory temporarily puts the breaks on those questions.

In the meantime, Kwak has helped Spears backpedal from the possibly irreversible point where she might have kept putting out uninspired music until her fans—or perhaps her conservators—finally stopped asking that of her. Glory, at least for now, gives her the chance to live up to those heights.

"If Britney is calling this album her baby," Kwak says, "then I'm kind of like the midwife."

This House That's Been Hit By Six Cars In Nine Years Is A Metaphor

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In North Carolina, the Bernarte family is learning that car-centered street design affects you—even when you think you're safe at home.

When a car plowed into a home in Raleigh, North Carolina, in August, it ran over a small white cross—which was there in remembrance of the last driver who crashed into the house. Since the homeowners moved in in 2004, the house has been hit by cars a total of six times.

The house, which sits at a corner after a sharp curve in a road, is a victim of bad street design. Now a new petition is asking the city to buy the house from the homeowners—who haven't been able to sell it—and move.

The first crash happened in 2007, in the middle of the night, when teenagers racing down the road flew out of control. "The damage was really severe," says Carlo Bernarte, who lives in the house with his wife and young children. "It went all the way to the second floor. It was like somebody threw a bomb in our house."

The family wrote to the city council asking for help, and then learned from neighbors that crashes had happened before they bought the house as well. The city said there was nothing it could do; the Bernartes paid to fix the house. But a little over a year later, a drunk driver hit the wall in front of the house, sending bricks and glass flying into the living room.

After the second accident, the family tried to sell. But the realtor backed out after realizing that they'd have to disclose the danger. It's something that the previous homeowner should have done as well, but because of the statute of limitations, the family can't sue.

The city put up some new signs, and there were four accident-free years. Then, on a Saturday afternoon, with family and friends gathered in the living room, a drunk driver hit the wall in front of the house. A stop sign ricocheted toward the window, barely missing Bernarte's daughter. They complained again; again the city failed to fix the problem. Another drunk driver crashed a year later. In 2015, a speeding driver drove into the dining room and died. Less than a year later, there was another crash.

"I'm back to where I was 9 or 10 months ago," Bernarte says. "We're angry, upset, scared." Each time a crash happens, he has to take time off work. His homeowner's insurance has been cancelled. His youngest daughter, age six, spends most of her time at a relative's house; the whole family has started staying somewhere else on weekends, and living in fear the rest of the time.

"Every time it gets dark, there's always that unknown," he says. "It happens when you're sleeping."

After the most recent accident, someone else in Raleigh—who doesn't know the family—decided to start the Change.org petition.

"Because of all the media coverage, I assumed the city or DOT would surely do something to remedy this problem," says Christine Redshaw, a local business owner, who first heard about the family after the 2015 accident. "How wrong I was. When I saw on the news it happened again in August, I was furious. The city had done nothing between the crash in October and the one in August. They had implemented a few things before the last two crashes, but even they admitted these solutions weren't working."

Redshaw agrees that the location is inherently unsafe. "Sadly, this is an area that has always been a stretch where people race, and get a high speed, right before the dangerous curve . . . so they end up in the Bernarte's front yard/porch/house," she says.

In a way, it's the ultimate example of bad suburban street design, not only dangerous for anyone trying to walk or bike nearby, but dangerous even if people are inside their home. Simple changes the city has attempted, such as new lights and arrows, can't fix the fundamental flaw of the layout. Streets that are unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists are also unsafe for drivers—four drivers and passengers have died in the six accidents. The string of crashes also serves as an apt metaphor for modern car culture; it consumes our lives, and even sometimes our homes.

The petition asks the city to compensate the Bernartes for the house. Redshaw thinks it should be demolished. "No family should ever live there . . . Carlo has been inundated with offers from realtors wanting to sell his home . . . at a loss of course. To me, this is very troubling. Obviously, the house is a danger to any family that lives there. Selling this house would be criminal, in my opinion."

The petition has gathered around 20,000 signatures so far. Bernarte has hope that it may help. If not, he plans to move, despite the loss. "My options are running out," he says. "I was at the point to get my stuff and just abandon the home, but I was told no, because that would be a huge financial loss for me. But it's between that and my safety. I'm going to give this a month or two. If nothing happens, we're going to just get the hell out of here. Bad credit, I'll just take the hit. Which is really unfair."

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How Unconscious Bias Is Affecting Our Ability To Listen

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Research shows listeners tend to have a bias against female voices, even when they're saying the same thing as a man.

Sloppy grammar, sounding like you just woke up, ending statements with a slight uptick in pitch, called "uptalk" or "Valley girl speak," have all been proven to undermine a person's success.

But how does the listener break down information when both a man and a woman are saying the exact same thing? According to research, the voice itself is the source of unconscious bias for the listener, and women are interpreted differently as a result.

"Gendered Listening"

Meghan Sumner, an associate professor of linguistics at Stanford University, stumbled into the unconscious bias realm after years of investigating how listeners extract information from voices, and how the pieces of information are stored in our memory. Study after study, she found that we all listen differently based on where we're from and our feelings toward different accents. It's not a conscious choice, but the result of social biases that form unconscious stereotyping which then influences that way we listen.

"It's not always what someone said, it's also how they said it," Sumner tells Fast Company. "How we view people socially from their voice, influences how we attend to them, how we listen to them."

For instance, in one experiment, Sumner found that the "average American listener" preferred a "Southern Standard British English" voice rather than one who had a New York City accent, even if both voices are saying the same words. Consequently, the listener will remember more of what the English speaker says and will deem them as smarter. All of this is impacted by the stereotypes that we have of British people and New Yorkers.

Even if you don't have any association or interactions with a group of people, a listener can still presume they know what those people would say. For example, if you don't interact with women often, you might still assume you know what women talk about. It doesn't matter what the woman is actually saying because the listener will always automatically anticipate what she'll say next, or what she's trying to say.

Often, this stops us from truly listening to what people say. In another small study, Sumner and her colleague, Ed King, found that if a man says the word "academy," the listener might assume that he's speaking about a school, but when a woman says "academy," listeners will more likely presume that she's talking about an award show.

Voices And Context

Contrary to what many may think, unconscious bias is not a bias against one group, according to Sumner, but is the gap created from "the pulling apart of the two categories." She's found that there's not a negative bias against women. It's just that when women are compared to men, they are downgraded while men are upgraded.

Sumner found that even when a certain female voice is deemed trustworthy, clear, and comprehensible, her voice receives lower ratings when put in context with a man's voice. Even if a man's voice is rated as not-so-reliable or intelligent on its own, when he's compared to a woman's, he suddenly gets a boost in ratings.

In an interview for Stanford's Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Sumner says, "It is clear that how we hear a voice can change depending on whether it is alone, or in the context of another voice. Everything is relative."

Beating Back Biases

It's obvious that unconscious bias impacts all of our choices. But if we can't help it, what can we do about it?

Most importantly, let's not talk about what women should be doing, says Sumner, but rather, how each and every one of us can change the way we process information.

When you can, she suggests, consider writing everything down and going back to read over your notes to make sure you're really getting what people are saying. Even then, there's a good chance you are not actually writing down what they're saying, warns Sumner, but only what you think they said.

This can be particularly valuable during the hiring process. Sumner points to Iris Bohnet's work on removing societal barriers that could be putting women at a professional disadvantage. In her book What Works: Gender Equality by Design, Bohnet, a behavioral economist at Harvard University, recommends having structured job interviews where the hiring manager thinks about questions that can predict success beforehand, then asks all candidates the same questions, in the same order.

Taking that practice a step further, Sumner's suggestion to record the conversation through note-taking can be particularly valuable. If the interviewer is focused on writing down what the candidate is saying, they are not so focused on the candidate's demeanor or their demographic characteristics.

By assigning each candidate's answers a number instead of their name serves to anonymize the responses somewhat when the notes are reviewed. Another option would be to ask candidates to fill out the performance-based questions in their own writing after having a face-to-face interview for personality and culture fit purposes.

In every instance, ask: "What evidence do I have that I'm basing my decision on?" advises Sumner. She cautions that discriminatory behavior, especially those related to vocal cues are activated "fast and early," meaning the biases that come into play when we process what someone is saying occurs shortly after the initial meeting—much earlier than most of us expect.

A New Weapon In Food Safety: Tracking Everything We Eat From Seed To Stomach

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A big data approach to supply chain transparency could cut costs and prevent another Chipotle-like outbreak. But the data doesn't come cheap

For a startup founder, Charlie Sweat carries a particularly heavy burden. In 2006, he was CEO of Earthbound Farm, the California-based farm and factory that produces the majority of the country's packaged organic salads, when an E. coli outbreak struck the company's spinach. Three people died, and 200 more were sickened. The source, investigators later surmised, was likely at the source of the spinach: an Angus cattle ranch that had leased land to a spinach grower.

The experience left Sweat unnerved, but it gave him an idea, too. Preventing outbreaks was a matter of knowing where the tainted food came from. But for legacy food companies, supply chain transparency is a daunting task, complicated by a vast number of suppliers, plants, distributors, and products. Different producers use different tagging systems and different sensors to track different things. Piecing together the details of what comes from where and goes where from seed to table had never really been done successfully before. If it could be, the implications for both public health, corporate transparency, and anti-counterfeiting efforts would be huge: Between food and pharmaceuticals, the market for tracking technologies is expected to grow to an expected revenue of $14.1 billion by 2020, according to a report by Allied Market Research in 2014.

Charlie Sweat

That year, Sweat stepped down from Earthbound, capping a 16-year stint at the company, but he took his idea with him. A few months later, with money from the owners of Earthbound, friends and family and investors, he founded Frequentz, a Palo Alto-based startup that touts a comprehensive "track-and-trace" system for food safety—like FedEx tracking, but for each piece of the food supply chain, from seed to table.

Sweat says that by uploading and integrating any kind of data collected from any kind of tag or sensor, the system can discover the source of a food-borne pathogen, be it a contaminated farm or a broken refrigeration unit. The data could not only help companies identify inefficiencies on their supply chain, but also meet a rising crop of food safety regulations, and help satisfy our growing hunger for more transparency about the foods we eat. Named for the frequency of updates required for a transparent food supply chain, Frequentz aims to slash the number of food-borne illness outbreaks—and make a killing among efficiency- and transparency-conscious food companies.

"Since it is possible now to know everything about your product, the stakes are much higher if you haven't done everything you can to validate what you sell," says Sweat.

The food safety problem alone is immense and costly. Last year, Food Safety magazine counted 622 food safety recalls globally due to contamination, with each recall estimated to mean losses on average of $10 million. Food-borne pathogens affect as many as 48 million Americans a year, and according to research by Robert Scharff, an associate professor at Ohio State University, the annual cost of medical treatment, lost productivity, and illness-related mortality is $55.5 billion.

There's also the threat of illegal practices like unregulated fishing or adulteration, in which suppliers might add something to food to lower their costs. Said to be most prevalent in liquids such as olive oil and in powders such as spices, this form of fraud is estimated to cost the industry $10 billion to $15 billion a year. In one example last year, ground cumin had been covertly mixed with peanut protein, prompting about 20 recalls and leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue a consumer warning.

The Frequentz software, custom-designed for each client, depends in part on a growing transportation "internet of things," including sensors on food crates, in trucks, and on packages. It's built to accept mobile data from sensors measuring the condition of produce, such as freshness and temperature, as well as scanners picking up packing label data and geographic coordinates. Unlike its handful of competitors, including HarvestMark and FoodLogiQ, Sweat says Frequentz has been designed to combine any data collected from any sensor.

Data from even the smallest farms and fishing vessels can be uploaded on the fly. Eventually, says Sweat, consumers at supermarkets will be able to access that data on their smartphones, including whether a product is fair trade, was harvested or made by workers earning living wages, or contains GMOs or gluten.

[Photo: Flickr user Aranami]

The Food Crisis That Changed Everything

The concept of "track and trace" for food is still a relatively new one for the legacy supply chains that bring the world its food. So far, the cost of such systems has been prohibitive for the food industry, which, despite trillion-dollar revenues in the U.S. alone, faces persistently thin margins. That hesitation can be seen in Frequentz's business: In its first year, 2014, sales totaled $3 million; last year's inched up to $4.5 million.

That calculus began to change last year, after an estimated 500 people fell ill after eating at Chipotle outlets in several states, most from norovirus. At least 60 suffered salmonella poisoning and more than 50 ate E. coli-contaminated food. (E. coli and salmonella bacteria tend to originate in feces and usually reach humans through raw or undercooked meat and other foods.) According to Chipotle, sales at locations that have been open for more than a year were down 23.6% for the quarter ending July 2016. Profits fell to $25.6 million from $140.2 million the year before.

Investors weren't kind either: After shutting down all of its stores for safety training and giving away 6 million free burritos to generate a bit of positive PR, the restaurant chain lost nearly half its market capitalization from its pre-crisis high, or close to $11 billion. Chipotle executives have said they believe it could take 18 months for the stock price to recover. In a report, Deutsche Bank analyst Brett Levy noted Chipotle's willingness to take drastic action, "but we also question whether [Chipotle] will ever regain its lost luster."

Chipotle's failure to promptly resolve and explain the outbreaks—and to offer more transparency to its customers—caused other companies to take notice, says Sweat. Now, Frequentz's customers include food-based subsidiaries of the $65-billion German retail giant Metro AG, and he has projects in development at Costco and the Campbell Soup Co.

"If you can respond proactively in real time and explain to consumers what happened during an outbreak and how you are going to keep it from happening again, you can retain that consumer," says Sweat. "Chipotle's revenues are still down. Consumers vote with their wallets."

Frequentz is also spreading out to the pharmaceutical industry, and expects cosmetics and personal products to soon embrace ingredient tracking as well. The company has received a total of $20 million in equity investment as well as investments from insiders and owners, with Sweat the largest individual investor. This month, Sweat says Frequentz will complete a Series C financing round led by investment firm Capricorn Healthcare & Special Opportunities, which also provided seed financing.

For its part, Chipotle recently launched its own track-and-trace program with one of Frequentz's competitors, Durham, North Carolina-based FoodLogiQ. Chipotle had previously relied on its own tracking system, but last year's outbreak exposed a critical lapse: Once ingredients got to stores, all tracking stopped. Tomatoes, for instance, from any number of sources, were mixed together during food prep.

That's why, even after an extensive investigation by the Centers for Disease Control, the exact source of the two Chipotle outbreaks was never found. In February, the CDC concluded its investigation without tracking down exactly which food or ingredient was responsible, citing the problem of ingredients mixed at stores. Chipotle welcomed the decision.

Chris Arnold, a Chipotle representative, said the company now knows which supplier sent which item to which restaurant using package bar codes, "in much the same way overnight delivery services track package shipments around the world," with the aim of tracking food "from seed to stomach." With FoodLogiQ, they now track every ingredient all the way through food preparation. If you get sick at Chipotle and you know where you ate and what time, the company can more readily nail the source of the contamination.

Track-and-trace companies like Frequentz, FoodLogiQ, and HarvestMark specialize in gathering and analyzing data around the movement of food, but actually detecting viruses and bacteria on site is a different challenge. Other startups like Clear Labs, Ancera, and SnapDNA are racing to market with faster, cheaper, more reliable mobile pathogen tests, aimed at identifying the pathogens responsible for an outbreak in just hours and accelerating a process that typically takes weeks.

Working together, tracking and testing technology companies could make future food-borne pathogen outbreaks inexcusable. After a recent E. coli outbreak in flour sickened hundreds, the maker of the flour, General Mills, recalled 45 million pounds of it, about 2% of its annual output, and issued a set of recommendations to the Food and Drug Administration, including that it convene experts focused on identifying long-term solutions, like whole genome sequencing.

Still, supply chain transparency remains a venture fund backwater, with few new companies entering the space. Investments are relatively small—a few million dollars each. Tracking ingredients is a time-consuming slough that technology makes possible, but not easy. Most food companies are waiting for costs to come down, says Melissa Tilney, cofounder of AgFunder, a company that tracks investments in agriculture and food technology. "This is not considered the land of technology unicorns."

After using Frequentz for a year and a half, Andres Cuka, chief operating officer at Marbelize, a giant Ecuador-based tuna processor, estimates it may be another three years before the Frequentz system pays for itself. That estimate is based not just on improved efficiencies, but on the assumption that increased transparency will allow him to raise prices and convince consumers to buy more Marbelize tuna.

Still, Sweat believes the food industry is at a tipping point, as consumers start to demand more transparent labeling. A law passed in May 2014 in Vermont pushed Congress to create a more comprehensive national food labeling law requiring GMO disclosure, which President Obama signed into law last month.

"This is going to drive more communication between consumers and food producers," Sweat says. "It is a communication Frequentz facilitates."

That level of transparency is valuable for small vendors as well, says Rob Trice, a partner in Better Food Ventures, a two-year-old seed stage food-tech investment fund. He's invested in eHarvestHub, a startup providing mobile tagging and tracking to small family farms, enabling them to work efficiently with larger distributors and retailers. "Investors are fuming about Chipotle," says Trice. "Starting now, companies are expected to have this technology in place."

[Photo: Unsplash user Tom Sodoge]

Knowing And Showing Your Supply Chain

Marbelize, which moves 4,000 tons of fish a month sold under 950 different labels around the world, turned to Frequentz a year ago when it wanted to distance itself from the proliferation of illegal fishing operations.

The system is designed to log events as simple as when a box of canned tuna moves from a truck to a processing plant or as complex as turning that tuna into a frozen entree. "We verify every time there is a chain of custody event or transformative event of the product," Sweat says.

"If we could identify ourselves as having met all of the certifications—we are 'dolphin safe'—it increases our marketability," says Cuka, of Marbelize. "Consumers want to know where their tuna comes from, how it is caught. We want to show them everything about our tuna."

Today, when a Marbelize boat hauls in a catch, the captain stands on deck with a computer tablet in hand taking photos that show the species, the dimensions of individual fish, and the abundance of the catch. The photos record the geolocation of the fishing boat, proving the catch was in legal waters. "We can see all of this in real time long before the boat comes in," says Cuka. Formerly hidden operating inefficiencies, he adds, are now becoming obvious.

This year, Sweat has also signed up the Honduran Ministry of Fisheries, representing 2,400 fishing companies, and is negotiating with Myanmar's wild shrimp industry, which has as many as 20,000 fishing vessels. "They have to have electronic solutions that validate their seafood was caught legally and sustainably" to comply with international fishing regulations, he says.

To Cuka, the dream is that consumers at the grocery store will someday be able to scan a QR code on a tuna can and see the photos of the fish at the moment of capture.

Millennials in particular want to know what they are putting in their bodies, says Eve Turow Paul, author of A Taste of Generation Yum, who consults with food companies about how to reach this target market. The trick to a premium price can be as simple as wrapping food in clear plastic, as Kind does with its bars.

"[Millennials] are anxious about an uncertain world and lack trust in the big companies that dominate it," Paul says. Often the only thing they feel they can control is what they eat, or don't eat. Thanks largely to millennial consumers, transparency now "is not negotiable," Campbell's senior manager for corporate social responsibility Niki King told a gathering of food and agriculture company executives this month during a webinar sponsored by the Center for Food Integrity, a food industry advocacy group. With no clear definition for "ethical," "sustainable," or even "healthy," complete transparency is becoming the universal standard for a company's trustworthiness with consumers.

A processing center at Marbelize, in EcuadorFrequentz

After Chipotle, track-and-trace technologies are simply "a cost of being in the food business," says Charlie Piper, who recently stepped down as the CEO of HarvestMark. Still, he warns, the technologies alone are only as effective at monitoring the supply chain as the human beings who manage it. "The client has to be focused on continued improvement," he says.

Chipotle's new track-and-trace system, FoodLogiQ, is the most established of the new track-and-trace service companies. Eight years ago, after a mad cow disease outbreak in Canada, FoodLogiQ's parent company Clarkston Consulting was hired to create a birth-to-slaughter tracing system for beef. In 2013, operating as a wholly owned subsidiary, FoodLogiQ was hired to design the track-and-trace system for Wholefoods' "Responsibly Grown" program, which ranks produce suppliers on environmental sustainability.

FoodLogiQ's business took off last fall when it was able to move its clients from paper spreadsheets to a cloud-based software service that could be accessed anywhere via smartphones.

"Our clients don't need their own servers now. They don't need an IT department," says Dean Wiltse, FoodLogiQ's CEO, echoing a mantra now heard throughout the growing cloud services industry. Revenues at the privately held company are expected to triple this year, he says. "Brands need to get their supply chain in order. They are being called to task."

He echoes Sweat, underscoring that supply chain transparency will eventually sweep through all food-related supply chains for the cost savings alone.

"We cut the time spent dealing with suppliers in half," he says. He tells customers to expect $1 savings for every 25 cents they invest in track-and-trace services.

Sweat's chief selling point is regulatory compliance, but he closes deals by talking about saving money, through efficiencies and lower insurance rates. At Earthbound, he says, "we were able to show our insurance carriers that we reduced product recalls and reduced the cost of goods. So they reduced our insurance premiums."

Driscoll's Watsonville facilities, California[Photo: Steve Kurtz, courtesy of Driscoll's]

How The Berry Gets Made

None of this was obvious until recently. Five years ago, HarvestMark, another seed-to-table service inspired by the Earthbound E. coli outbreak, partnered with the Cincinnati, Ohio-based grocery chain Kroger to provide detailed supply chain information on food products in a few of its stores.

"Kroger stopped it after one year," says HarvestMark founder Elliott Grant, who cited the cost—two cents per SKU, or individual inventory item—as impossible to justify.

There was another lesson too: People buying fish didn't necessarily want to see their future dinner on the hook.

"We learned consumers don't really care that much. They want to trust that the store where they shop has done this work. They don't want to do it themselves." In 2011, Grant sold HarvestMark for an undisclosed amount to ag-tech giant Trimble Navigation, which posted sales of $2.5 billion in 2015.

Today, HarvestMark, which unlike Frequentz relies on proprietary QR-code labels, counts among its clients Sam's Club, Woolworth's of Australia, and Driscoll's, the Watsonville, California, fresh berry company.

HarvestMark UPC

Driscoll's packs berries in the field into the individual plastic clamshells that shoppers pick up in the grocery store. The fruit is never washed. No one touches the berries after the picker closes the clamshell. Driscoll's has long coded each case of clamshells and tracked them to store shelves, allowing fast, easy trace-back in cases of contamination.

Five years ago, the company hired HarvestMark to help it create a system to add their QR codes to each individual berry clamshell package they sell. Consumers could then use their smartphones to scan the code on the package they bought into the company's website and tell Driscoll's exactly what they thought about the berries they had just eaten. Using that QR code, the company could trace those berries back through every inch of the distribution trail, from the customer on their website to the field where they could identify the picker by name.

It turns out people are passionate about their berries. The flood of detailed and actionable data direct from consumers—the condition of the berries, the condition of the store where they were purchased—made expensive focus group market research obsolete. Soon, kinks in the supply chain became more apparent. Rather than blaming the farmers for less than perfect berries, Driscoll's knew which drivers turned off their truck refrigeration to save gas, and which stores' refrigeration was broken.

Driscoll's system has greatly advanced the market for berries, says Soren Bjorn, Driscoll's executive vice president for the Americas. As quality improved and became more consistent, demand grew. This occasional luxury became a must-have fruit. "It was an a-ha moment for us," he says.

[Photo: Bruce Ashley, courtesy of Driscolls]

"It has taken a lot of the tension out of our relationships with growers," says Bjorn. The system quickly paid for itself. "There is less waste, improved sales, increased consumer loyalty. Overall berry quality has increased, which allows us to charge a premium price. We sell a billion clamshells of berries a year. If we could grow more berries, we could sell them."

A transparent connection with growers can present challenges. Veteran farm workers—some of whom hail from indigenous communities from Oaxaca, Mexico, and who are often paid by the weight of their haul—are fighting for fairer pay and working conditions. Workers at Washington state's family-owned berry farm and packaging plant Sakuma Brothers have called for a national boycott of Driscoll's berries—the primary purchaser of Sakuma blueberries and blackberries—hoping to enlist the brand's customers in their cause.

Dan Sun, the Trimble executive responsible for bringing HarvestMark into the company and its new CEO, says food safety and regulatory requirements are the initial draw for clients. Perhaps, 15% of the companies that purchase HarvestMark services pursue supply chain transparency strictly to satisfy consumer demand. Overall, cost savings are now the stronger incentive.

Internal studies show clients experience a 20% to 30% reduction in product waste, he says. For a large food company, that can translate into billions of dollars in savings. "We make sure the supply chain is tight enough that the food reaches the grocery store shelf without waste," says Sun. "The food and agriculture industry is very conservative, but when they see the savings, they change. I'm surprised there aren't more players offering track-and-trace."

These are early days for this technology, says Sweat. Prospective clients want the results. Overhauling their systems, however, is daunting. "Big changes like this take time."

The 5 Worst Social Media Practices Brands Should Avoid

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In social media, as in humor, timing is everything. Experts weighed in on the best time NOT to post that pic or tweet.

You don't need to look too hard to find brands that have suffered epic social media fails. Like that time Spirit Airlines tried to leverage the sexual abuse caused when hackers stole and leaked privately stored nude photos of female celebrities into a low airfare marketing campaign. Or how about when AT&T tweeted about 9/11 while promoting their phones?

The lure of the medium is powerful. Various studies show that the proper use of social media can increase brand sales by 55% in some cases or by millions of dollars in others. However, in hindsight, the examples above prove that despite the importance and power of social media to brands, there are often times when they are better off stepping away from the keyboard and not posting anything at all.

Whether it's to avert a social debacle or maintain a growing following, three social media experts reveal some practices to avoid.

1. Don't Automatically Rely On Auto-Posting

Social media services like Hootsuite and Buffer allow brands to draft social media posts in advance and auto-post at a predetermined time in the future. Yet some brands use these services to their detriment, says Philip Calvert, a social media strategist and professional speaker on social media selling.

"I know a number of financial-services tech companies who are constantly tweeting and posting on social media—all times of day and night, and it's obvious that they have been preprogrammed with very little thought for whether or not their customers are listening/watching," says Calvert.

This mechanical posting style can harm a brand's social media image. Those that rely too much on auto-posting run the risk of turning what should be an informative stream into something that is generic, dull, and predictable.

Calvert says one way brands can identify if auto-posting could potentially be harming their social media presence is by comparing the number of followers a brand has to the number of customers they have. "If there is a big disparity, then it means that the value of their social media activity isn't yet fully engaging their customers," Calvert says. Time to replace the auto-poster bot with a human behind the keyboard.

2. Don't Be Deaf To Tragedy

One of the first places news breaks about a tragedy such as a school shooting, a natural disaster, or a terror attack is Twitter. Although they're mixed in with sports and tech news and celebrity gossip, once updates on the tragedy start to appear, people's mind-sets shift. Suddenly, everything else on social media seems trite and unimportant. That change in public perception to non-related tweets is something brands need to be extremely conscious of, says Clare Groombridge, founder and director of South Coast Social Ltd, a boutique social media and marketing agency exclusively for small- to medium-sized businesses.

"We have noticed a real shift in the awareness of brands to the need to be respectful in the wake of devastating news events, such as the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris last year," says Groombridge, adding:

Many brands who continued with their scheduled content (particularly on Twitter) in the aftermath were publicly lambasted for their insensitivity—demonstrating that although prescheduling content is an excellent way for businesses to maintain their social media accounts, these should still be constantly monitored and accessed, and how to address any such events should form part of your company's social media policy.

One of the worst examples of a brand caught unawares was Amazon, when its "cereal killer" tweet appeared after the Pulse nightclub shootings earlier this summer. This massive gaffe could have been avoided entirely simply by not posting anything.

Groombridge says that if a brand makes the decision to have a period of silence, a simple tweet explaining why, as a mark of respect is fine. She adds that 24 hours is an appropriate period to maintain a period of silence. "[Entrepreneur and author] Peter Shankman said it best after the Boston Marathon bombings," says Groombridge. "'No company ever went broke because they opted to shut up for 24 hours.'"

3. Don't Think You're Always Funny

Everyone likes to be the funny person—but humor is subjective. Done well, it increases the likelihood of sharing, and therefore, the brand's reach. However, when the potential audience of a joke shared on a social feed includes millions of different people—each with their own tastes, temperaments, and outlooks—the risk of falling flat or offending is pretty high.

"Humor is a minefield for brands on social media," warns Groombridge. "We get asked by brands all the time, 'Can we be funny?' and as a rule that's generally a 'no.' Remember, your tone of voice should always feel authentic, not forced, avoiding inconsistencies and sudden moments of cutesiness if that's not the tone of your brand."

One of the worst examples of an attempt to be funny that instead came across as insensitive, sexist, and cruel was when IHOP tweeted a picture of a stack of pancakes with the caption "flat but has a great personality."

"IHOP as a brand is known for their quirky, creative social content using simple tweets such as 'Pancakes On Fleek' to gain attention and create talkability among a millennial audience," says Groombridge. "This time, however, they took it a step too far when their controversial tweet backfired spectacularly and went viral for all the wrong reasons," she says. "Sexism and casual misogyny are never okay." asserts Groombridge, "The company apologized and removed the post," she notes, "but it still lives on as a lesson in knowing where your limits should be when attempting to reach a younger customer base."

4. Don't Hijack Trending Topics

Knowing what topics are trending and what hashtags are popular at the moment can be a boon to any social media strategy. Brands do need to be wary of trying to hijack a trending topic hashtag in order to get a little more spotlight time in people's feeds, says Groombridge.

"As a rule, unless a brand has something relevant to contribute to a topic, then they should carefully consider whether to comment," she says. "Piggy-backing a trending topic just to get comments or views can often backfire, and result in negative sentiment toward your brand."

Case in point: Groombridge says the hashtag #WhyIStayed was being used after a video of Ray Rice punching his then fiancee Janay Palmer led to his termination from the Baltimore Ravens. Women took to Twitter using the hashtag to discuss their experiences in abusive relationships. Seeing its popularity, DiGiorno Pizza hijacked the hashtag with a tweet that stated "#WhyIStayed You Had Pizza" without realizing the implications of their lack of research into what the hashtag represented. Its tweet led to a backlash against the brand on social media.

"Remember—trends can evaporate quickly in the fast-paced world of social media, and you can run the risk of appearing out of the loop very fast," says Groombridge. "Brands should always research the original context of the topic as well."

5. Don't Forget To Support Your Critics

No brand likes to be criticized on social media, but one thing brands should never do is remain quiet while one of their critics is being attacked by trolls, says Sofie Sandell, social media speaker and author of Digital Leadership.

One example of poor social media management is when H&M Sweden failed to respond to comments on a post on their Facebook wall. There, a female customer pointed out that one of the printed motifs on an H&M sweater featured Tupac Shakur, a rapper who was found guilty of sexual assault.

"Hey, H&M," the customer wrote on their Facebook wall, "yesterday, I strolled into H&M and discovered that you have printed a shirt with the motif of a convicted rapist and now you market this as something cool. Had a T-shirt of Lindgren [a man a repeatedly attacked and raped women in Umeå, Sweden] been equally okay?"

Her post got thousands of comments including a number from people threatening to rape her. "The social media team left [the] comments that were threatening to rape Julia [the commenter] for over a month, even though they promised to remove them," says Sandell. "H&M should have removed the online assault immediately." Both H&M and Facebook were condemned for the attacks.

Misogyny and threats of violence should never be tolerated on social media. If your brand remains quiet while trolls attack your critics, your silence could at the very least be viewed as your brand being indifferent to them and at worst be seen as condoning the attacks.

Do Try To Fix It

"Where humans are involved, there will inevitably be social media screw-ups—and in today's hyperconnected world, people will be very quick to call you to account for your 'inappropriate' posts," says the social media strategist Calvert.

"Yes, a post can be taken down, but far better is to apologize quickly and sincerely," Calvert says. "Long before we had social media, customer service experts used to tell brands that 'today's most unhappy customer could be tomorrow's best advocate for your business,'" he observes. "It's the same with social media, too. Brands who pay close attention to this advice might just be in a strong position to turn their social media disasters into a positive outcome."

Introducing The World's First Sneaker Design Academy

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Thanks to a partnership with Foot Locker and Asics, students from the academy will soon see their designs on shelves.

Some kids dream of becoming an astronaut or a fireman. D'wayne Edwards only wanted to do one thing: design shoes. He was 11 when he sketched his first sneaker using a number two pencil. But Edwards didn't see a path forward for himself in the footwear industry. A big stumbling block was that there were no shoe design schools where he could learn the craft.

Edwards eventually got a job as a file clerk for sneaker brand L.A. Gear. Every day for six months, he put a different shoe sketch in the company's employee suggestion box. The company eventually got the message and hired him to become a designer at the age of 19, making him the youngest professional designer at the industry.

D'wayne Edwards and his students

He went on to top design roles at brands like Sketchers and Nike, and over the course of his career, he has produced 500 men's and women's shoes ranging from athletic to casual to formal. But when he was in a position to hire young designers, he found that the lack of footwear training continued to be a gap in the industry.

"Toward the end of my career, it was very difficult for me to hire students directly out of college, primarily because there was no education that helped them bridge the gap between their collegiate career and going into a professional career as a footwear designer," he says.

He's changing all that with the Pensole Footwear Design Academy, which he launched in 2010, offering intensive courses in shoe design taught by people who have worked at companies such as Nike and Adidas. Classes are usually three or four weeks long and cram in what a student might learn over the course of a full college semester. "We do an average of 14 hours straight every day," Edwards says. "We do that on purpose: The design industry is brutal that way. You will have to pull all-nighters to get projects done."

Students learn to do consumer research, study materials, then prototype—things that most footwear professionals only learned how to do on the job. These days, 850 people apply for each class of only 18 slots. The school invites applications from young people much like Edwards himself, who want to pursue careers in the shoe industry but don't have the basic training to get started. Some are as young as high-school age, but others attend schools like Parsons and MIT pursuing other majors but want to learn about the nuances of designing shoes.

"Footwear is one of the most complex things you put on your body," he says. "It's like designing a house or a car. There are multiple materials that need to be considered. You need to think about the human that is actually wearing it. Shoes are the foundation of your entire body."

Designs for the Foot Locker competition

This year, Pensole partnered with Foot Locker and Asics on a project called "Fueling the Future of Footwear." Some 1,400 people applied for 18 slots in a master class taught by Edwards himself where they could then compete to design a new Asics sneaker. "The idea was to give students a taste of what it's like to work at a real company," Edwards says. "They learn about the rigors and all of the decisions that have to be made to put a product on shelves."

The winning design, which was unveiled today, will be sold at select Foot Locker stores starting September 17. The group came up with 40 different shoe concepts, and the one that was selected contains vibrant purple and orange panels that tell a story about the daily life of the person who will be wearing the sneaker. "It brings to mind sunrise, sundown, and the middle of the day," he says. "Through the colors and materials selected, you get a glimpse of what that looks like."

A sketch for the Foot Locker competition

Edwards says that sneaker design is often much more than just creating a comfortable and stylish shoe. It's about producing a rich narrative and weaving together different themes and motifs. Foot Locker will shed light on the design process and the storytelling that go into the shoe, as it will sell these sneakers in stores over the next couple of weeks.

For Edwards, watching these students see their hard work transformed into a shoe that is sold on shelves is exhilarating and takes him back to the very beginning of his career. "I still remember that day back in 1990 when I walked into a Foot Locker and saw one of my shoes on the shelf," he says. "You couldn't pay me to give up that moment."

Your Guide To Generation Z: The Frugal, Brand-Wary, Determined Anti-Millennials

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The generation forged during the Great Recession is entering college and the workforce. Here's what companies need to know about them.

It's a crisp late-summer day in Tacoma, Washington, and Maya Makino has just started her sophomore year at the University of Puget Sound. She's 19, which puts her at the upper end of generation Z, whose members currently range in age from 5 to 20. Like many of her peers, she doesn't think of college as a relaxing period for self-discovery and navel gazing. She was 10 years old when the recession hit—just old enough to be aware of what was going on—and that has shaped her feelings about higher education.

"There's a lot of stress about finding a job after college and being able to support yourself," Makino says. "My friends and I are really focused on finishing up in four years and having a good career path. There's less time for reflection because there's that worry about whether you're going to be able to survive in the economy if you're not really directed."

For the past several years, the media has been obsessed with millennials, the most studied group ever. But as Makino's generation grows up and gets ready to enter the workforce, corporations are paying more attention to this crop of young people born between 1996 and 2011. At 60 million strong in the United States, they outnumber millennials by 1 million. It would be easy to assume that they are just an exaggerated version of the generation that came before them, spending even more of their lives on social media, doing even more of their shopping online, and demonstrating an ever greater collaborative nicer nature. But generation Z grew up in a starkly different historical context than millennials, which has given them a distinct outlook on the world.

Millennials were internet pioneers. They invented Facebook, shopped from their smartphones, and smoothly transitioned from satellite TV to Hulu and Netflix. Generation Z, meanwhile, doesn't remember life without these basics of 21st century life. Millennials helped elect a black president and legalize gay marriage; many generation Zers see these milestones as the norm. Millennials came of age during a time of economic expansion and were shocked to find a diminished, unwelcoming job market after college; generation Z has been shaped by the recession and is prepared to fight hard to create a stable future for themselves.

Makino is fairly typical in this regard. She grew up in a solidly middle-class family in Arcata, California, with a professor father and an artist mother. At 19, she is responsible, mature, and financially savvy; she's taken on a work-study job at her college alumni magazine to help pay the bills and is always mindful of the cost of her education. "I was thinking about taking a gap semester to have a life outside of being a good student," she says. "But if you step off the treadmill for even a minute, you start accruing [interest] on your student loans. So I decided against it."

Since many members of gen Z have not even entered elementary school yet, it's impossible to draw definitive conclusions about what their habits, lifestyles, and world views will be. But as the oldest among them flood into colleges and start their careers, we're beginning to see trends emerge. Here's what we know.

The Occupy Movement And The Rejection Of Big Brands

Marketers have been carefully studying generation Z for many years now, observing their preferences as children and teenagers, and finding that they have a very different relationship with companies than their elders. "Compared to any generation that has come before, they are less trusting of brands," says Emerson Spartz, CEO of the digital media company Dose. "They have the strongest bullshit filter because they've grown up in an era where information was available at all times."

For decades, brands communicated through advertisements, so corporations with the biggest budgets could make the biggest impact on billboards, magazine spreads, TV, and radio ads. But with the internet, now people can dig into what brands really stand for, beyond the heavily photoshopped visions they try to project. Online reviews have made shoddy products easy to spot. Consumers immediately find out when a company has lied to them, such as when Volkswagen installed software that cheated on emissions tests or when the Honest Company included chemicals in its laundry detergent that it had previously denied using. Blogs regularly dissect—and skewer—companies with ugly corporate culture or poor working conditions.

Spartz believes that because generation Z grew up amid the Occupy Wall Street movement, which portrayed big banking and corporate greed as public enemy No. 1, this has further aggravated their distrust of the behemoths. "Some of the anti-establishment sentiment has penetrated this generation," he says. "Big brands are the establishment and having a recognizable animal on the top right-hand corner of your shirt signals that you are part of the establishment."

There was a time when young people aspired to wear flashy labels conspicuously: Think the enormous polo player logo on Ralph Lauren shirts or the prominent label on Calvin Klein jeans. Millennials flocked to Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch. But kids are now showing some resistance to serving as walking advertisements, and as a result, many of the major apparel companies are faring poorly. "They're less brand-conscious and they are not spending as much as millennials do," says Kyle Andrew, chief marketing officer of American Eagle Outfitters, another brand that targets teens. (Unlike some of its competitors, American Eagle has seen sales and profits rise.)

According to Makino, this label-wariness is a part of everyday life on campus. "People here mostly dress in ill-fitting thrift store clothes," she says. "Even the few people who wear really nice clothes don't wear big logos plastered across the front."

Still, gen Z is hardly a lost cause for major companies. Spartz says that brands that are able to communicate with customers in an open, unfiltered way tend to do better with young people. Everlane and Cuyana, for instance, proactively offer insight into how products are made, and Warby Parker and Tom's make a point of explaining how they are trying to promote social good. "Authenticity and transparency are two ideals that they value highly," he says.

Gen-Zers also tend to trust individuals more than big institutions. As a result, many brands focused on them are partnering with social media influencers in an effort to appear more relatable. Companies might collaborate with an Instagram user who has a massive following, like Kaitlin Keegan or Susie Lau, paying them to feature a product or outfit on their account. "Generation Z is more willing to hear a brand's story when it is part of a narrative their peer is already telling," says Steven Lammertink, the founder and CEO of the Cirqle, a platform that connects brands with influencers. "This approach is not obtrusive."

Today's teens and young adults are not naive: Many are aware that Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube stars are paid to endorse products. (In fact, the FTC now requires influencers to disclose when they have been paid to endorse a product.) By and large, they trust that the people they follow on social media and respect are making a conscious decision about the brands they will work with. Lammertink says that he built his company so that influencers had to opt in to work with a brand, choosing to work only with brands they like. "We try and safeguard that authenticity," he says. "This is very different than the traditional method of brands reaching out to models or spokespeople and negotiating rates before agreeing to do a campaign."

Careful Spenders

Generation Z doesn't just stand out in terms of how they relate to brands; they're also spending their money differently. Today's teens and college students grew up hearing horror stories about how many millennials ended up living at home after college, sitting on a mountain of debt. So they tend to be financially cautious.

A survey by Lincoln Financial Group of 400 members of generation Z aged 15 to 19 found that they are saving far earlier than than older generations: 60% of them already have savings accounts and 71% say they are focused on saving for the future. Their top three priorities are getting a job, finishing college, and safeguarding money for the years to come. They rate these goals above spending time with friends and family, working out, or traveling. Jamie Ohl, president of retirement plan services at Lincoln Financial, says that we're seeing similarities between this young generation and the one that emerged in the years following the Great Depression. "When I think about the 'greatest generation' having gone through the Depression and how they taught their children, the boomers, to save, that's what this generation of parents is teaching generation Z," she says.

But while generation Z is realistic about the challenges ahead, 89% of them remain optimistic about their futures, which is higher than any other generation on record. "Part of this has to do with the natural optimism of youth," Ohl says. "But I also think it is important that they watched their parents come through the most recent financial crisis."

Companies have also noticed that young adults put a premium on getting good value for their money. Spirit Airlines, for instance, is preparing for gen Z to become the dominant group of travelers by rebranding itself as an ultra-low-cost carrier. The airline offers rock-bottom fares: It can cost as little as $151 to travel from New York to San Francisco, one way. But the ride comes with zero frills—no free checked bags or complimentary beverages on board. Spirit has found that this generation of college students, who are beginning to buy their own tickets for the very first time, is comfortable paying only for what they are using. "We're finding that generation Z is much more pragmatic around thinking about value," says Rana Ghosh, a revenue executive at Spirit. "It's not so much that they are price-conscious; it's about what they are getting for the money they are spending. As an airline, the draw is to get them from point A to point B safely and on time, so providing the same service for a fraction of the price appeals to them."

Cheryl Rosner, the CEO of Stayful, an app that helps people get competitive rates on boutique hotels by booking close to travel dates, has made similar observations. Rosner points out that younger consumers want to know what they are getting for the price, so they pay close attention to reviews of other people's experience and the extent of the discount. "You've got a group of people who have completely grown up on technology from the day they were born," she says. "They are very comfortable doing their research and finding things out for themselves, so if you're going to sell them on value, you really need to have your shit together. You can't just say that this hotel has the best prices, because that is not what value means."

And when it comes to technology, gen Z tends to be savvy about their approach to consuming electronics, resisting the allure of snatching up the latest, priciest products when there is a constant stream of new, inexpensive options. "Technological innovation is no longer an exciting, celebrated thing, as much as it is an expectation," says Sam Paschel, chief commercial officer of the headphone brand Skullcandy, which targets younger consumers. "Generation Z relates to technology as a tool, as opposed to an obsession." To keep up with the demands of today's teens, the company has invested heavily in scientists and researchers who work to improve the quality of sound. Skullcandy also just launched a line of wireless headphones to pre-empt the demise of the headphone jack in phones. At the same time, Skullcandy has avoided trotting these new products in an elaborate dog and pony show or even charging a premium for them. It strives for a subtler messaging that will speak to young consumers.

Ultra-Competitive, But Very Accepting

Given their focus on financial security, it's not surprising that generation Z is poised to be cutthroat when it comes to getting jobs and establishing careers. Jonah Stillman, a 17-year old from Minneapolis who, with his father David, wrote GenZ@Work, a book (due in March) about how his generation will fare as members of the workforce. The pair conducted two national studies of 4,000 teens about workplace attitudes and preferences. They've discovered that these young people are in "survival mode" and believe they will have to fight for what they want. They would feel lucky to get a job, which contrasts with the common perception of millennials as feeling entitled to a job. Sixty-six percent of gen-Zers say their number one concern is drowning in college debt, and 75% say there are ways of getting a good education besides going to college.

"Millennials are the most collaborative generation, launching applications like Facebook and sharing everything with everybody," Stillman says. "But gen Z is completely different: They are a very independent and competitive generation, having been taught by our parents that there are definitely winners and losers at life. Millennials, on the other hand, were told that if you work together, everybody can be a winner."

But even though they see the workplace as a battlefield, they are inclusive and tolerant of difference. They grew up with a black man as the leader of the free world, with women in positions of power in the workplace, and with openly gay celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Anderson Cooper, and Neil Patrick Harris. "As a whole, gen Z is a very accepting generation," Stillman says.

American Eagle Outfitters drew the same conclusion from in-depth market research of preteens and teenagers. "I felt really excited when we got some of this most recent data back," says Kyle Andrew, the CMO. "Honestly, they seem to be a lot nicer than other generations: They are not judgmental, they don't put people in boxes, and they don't seem to care as much about what you do, who you love, or what you look like. At least that is what they're telling us." As a result, the company has tried to incorporate these ideals into its marketing, with an e-commerce website and ad campaigns that are diverse, featuring models from a wide range of ethnicities, with a variety of hair textures and body types. "Generation Z seems to really care about engaging with brands that have values that align with their own," Andrew says. "You can't just make stuff: You have to stand for something. As a brand, we want to support and enable the freedom to be yourself."

Which, she acknowledges, is not easy when teens no longer rely so heavily on mass-market brands to help them express their identity to the world. In the past, kids wore labels that channelled that they were preppy or rebellious or sporty. But the internet has multiplied the number of clothing companies they can choose from, which has had a part in making them less brand-loyal; social media also offers them another platform to craft a public persona. "They are creating their own personal brand," Andrew says.

Volcom, an apparel company associated with the skater and surfer kids of the 1990s and early 2000s, says that it has to evolve to keep up with generation Z. "When Volcom was founded in 1991, there was more of a united counterculture," says Ryan Immegart, the company's marketing VP. "Punk and action sports was a really cool movement, and people felt that our brand was a way for them to be part of that. Our brand represented rebellion and nonconformity from what was happening around young people at the time."

But today's teens no longer need a company to create a community. On the internet, they can befriend like-minded people and join social movements. "There are so many different countercultures today," Immegart says. "For us, we have to grow and figure out the next chapter in our story." What that looks like, he's not ready to say.

Volcom isn't the only brand with millennial appeal that's now rethinking its strategies. Two years ago, for instance, Skullcandy launched a line of headphones that came in a range of "feminine" colors and were specifically designed to accommodate the physiological differences in women's ears. They were a hit among millennials who felt that the consumer electronic industry tended to focus on men's needs, but the response from teens was lukewarm. "Generation Z is much more gender-neutral when it comes to everything—clothing, style, conversation, bathroom choice," says Sam Paschel, the company's chief commercial officer. "Launching gender-specific products in the face of a generation that is thinking more gender-neutral is fascinating to observe."

It's one of the many ways companies are trying to keep up with the demands of generation Z. "The rate of change in society is increasing exponentially," Spartz says. "The world is changing more in 10 years now than it used to change in 100 years. So that means that the difference between someone who is born 20 years after someone else is going to seem like oceans of separation when it comes to shared experiences."

Good thing there's the internet to help bridge the gulf.


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Is Amazon's 30-Hour Workweek Program Good For Workers?

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Amazon's pilot part-time-with-full-benefits project aims to correct eroding work-life balance. But staff may not gain much.

Amazon announced last week that it's testing out a 30-hour workweek for "a few dozen" employees on some of its technical teams. Those employees, the Washington Post reports, will keep all the same benefits as full-time staff but earn 75% of the pay (Amazon already employs part-time workers with full benefits). Every member on those teams, including managers, will work 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with the remaining time on the clock made up of flex hours, and they'll have the option to become full-time if they wish.

According to the Post (which is owned by Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos), Amazon sees the move as a response to rising demand for more flexible hours. Arrangements like this one come with a mix of pros and cons—not just for the organization—but for workers, too.

What Amazon Gets

Like the smattering of tech companies expanding their benefits lately, Amazon is in a tight race for top-shelf talent. So it didn't help when a New York Times report in August 2015 slammed Amazon's culture as a sort of office-bound Hunger Games.

The company sharply rejected that characterization, and three months later it unveiled a more generous parental leave policy, putting it in league with Netflix, Adobe, and others that have recently done the same. Its 30-hour workweek program could help keep Amazon appealing to the most in-demand job candidates.

The Post reports that "team members will be hired from inside and outside the company," but it's unclear whether that means a net increase to Amazon's headcount in order to make up any shortfall in overall productivity.

While the initiative may be part of Amazon's continuing reputation rehab as an employer, it's also a recognition that recruiting is still a local game, says Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel. "Seattle has become a new epicenter for the talent wars (like Silicon Valley before it), with Facebook and other companies opening up big offices that compete there for talent against Microsoft, Amazon, and other Seattle incumbents," he tells Fast Company. "This, in turn, puts more pressure on these incumbents to come up with creative ways to retain and motivate top talent."

The rise of remote work tools and platforms theoretically lets companies hire people based anywhere, but according to Kasriel, geography still matters. "There might be millions of relevant professionals in the world, but restricting to local commute radiuses and to people available for 40-plus–hour-a-week, in-person roles narrows the available pool down drastically," he says. Amazon's new initiative may help counterbalance that.

What Workers Get

Tech companies aren't just competing with each other, though—they're also competing with freelancing. Intuit has estimated that 40% of the U.S. workforce will be made up of freelancers by 2020, and the top five industries for freelancers that FlexJobs recently ranked are all areas crucial to Amazon's business:

  1. Computer and IT
  2. Administrative
  3. Accounting and finance
  4. Customer service
  5. Software development

Kasriel points to a survey Upwork undertook last year with the Freelancers Union, where 75% of full-time and 68% of part-time independent workers said they chose to freelance because of the scheduling flexibility it allowed them. And according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of the more than 151 million Americans who were employed in August 2016, over 20.5 million (or 13.5%) were working part-time jobs "for noneconomic reasons."

Some in the tech world, including Kasriel, believe the knowledge economy is well on its way to becoming gig-ified, and that this can be a net gain for workers. After all, many have already expressed a desire (both in surveys and by voting with their feet) for more control over their work, even if that means more tenuous, temporary, or nonexistent relationships with traditional employers.

Although plenty of tech workers may jump at the chance to replace a chunk of their full-time jobs with their own side gigs, Amazon's offer may not be the ideal solution. Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, sees it as a form of "disenfranchisement of the labor force." The 30-hour workweek pilot, in his view, is "exactly one-half of the necessary move. Yes, reduce the workweek, but you don't have to reduce the pay proportionately, or at all."

Amazon isn't reducing 30-hour-a-week workers' benefits, so it isn't exactly saving money on them. If anything, those workers will be slightly pricier—just as long as they aren't expected to be any more productive, on average, than full-time staff.

This is where Rushkoff is skeptical. Cutting back time on the clock, he believes, makes the most sense as an incentive for greater efficiency. That's largely been the rationale behind some six-hour workday experiments in recent years, where reduced hours are meant to incentivize efficiency.

"The employee who gets five days of work done in four days shouldn't be punished for this, but rewarded," Rushkoff argues. "But that only works if management sees its employees as part of its company . . . You don't have to take the money away from them and deliver it to the shareholders," he says.

In other words, Rushkoff's view is that any company that offers a scaled-back schedule in exchange for proportionately less pay is effectively asking its most productive employees to purchase that freedom, then to make up the income shortfall on their own. To some workers, that opportunity is a perk in its own right, one they've been clamoring for, and that Amazon is finally delivering. To others, it may be a ticket for more career self-determination, sold at too high a price.

What I Learned (And Didn't Learn) At Apple's Big Event

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In a jam-packed event, Apple answered some major questions and left others hanging.

Last week, while I got ready to attend Apple's product launch extravaganza in San Francisco, I started asking myself big-picture questions which I hoped the event would answer. Now that the event is over, would you indulge me as I go over the questions I asked and ponder whether Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, and the other Apple execs who presented onstage addressed them?

1. Can Apple Make The Lack Of A Headphone Jack A Selling Point?

Onstage, when Phil Schiller addressed Apple's decision to ditch the headphone jack, he boiled it down to one word: "Courage." Apple has a long history of being willing to eradicate old technologies in the interest of pushing its devices into the future, or just making them thinner and lighter. Almost always, its willingness to do so riles people up. And almost always, the company's thinking makes sense in the fullness of time.

I don't get the sense that everybody who was skeptical about the death of the headphone jack before the event was immediately swayed by Schiller's pitch:

Still, as someone who was guardedly concerned about the move when I first heard about it, I find it easier to understand when I think about its impact on the iPhone 8, 9, 10, and beyond. Just as Apple removing the floppy drive from the original 1998 Mac helped propel the entire industry forward into an era when files would be shared over the internet—or at least via far higher-capacity storage media than a floppy disk—the deletion of the headphone jack is less about this year's iPhone than it is about an era to come in which cables of all sorts start to look like antiques. Or so I hope.

2. Are The Little iPhone And The Big iPhone Diverging?

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus (and 6 and 6 Plus before them) feel almost like the same camera in two screen sizes. With all the scuttlebutt about the iPhone 7 Plus's two-lens camera, I wondered if the big iPhone would feel like the flagship of the new line, or if it might differ from its smaller cousin in other respects.

After having attended the event, I think the difference between the two models is a tad less pronounced than I thought it might be. Yes, the 10X zoom and depth-of-field effects made possible by the dual-lens camera are cool, and might be a tipping point that leads some people to opt for the 7 Plus. But the smaller iPhone 7 also got a major overhaul to its camera. The distinction between the two models seems to be contingent on what Apple can cram into their cases, not a particular desire to aim the two iPhones at different audiences.

3. Just How Good Can iPhone Photography Get?

Well, the sample photos Apple showed looked spectacular, of course—they always do. The company didn't declare that the iPhone 7 Plus's camera had reached SLR quality, but it did quote a professional photographer saying he expected the iPhone to become a standard piece of equipment for serious shutterbugs' toolkits.

Me, I mostly shoot photos with my iPhone (or sometimes an Android phone such as the Honor 8). But when I'm shooting images I really care about, I still bring my trusty, bulky, pricey FujiFilm X100S. If either of the new iPhones leaves me seeing no reason to bother with the FujiFilm—even at family events I'm documenting for posterity, not Instagram—it will be a personal sea change.

4. What's The Trajectory Of Apple Watch Hardware Upgrades?

This one seems pretty clear. Except for the nifty new ceramic case option, the Apple Watch Series 2's major changes—GPS and a swim-proof case design—are all about making it a better companion for people who are serious about fitness. In 2014 and 2015, it felt like the fashion angle was as important as any other aspect of this watch, but now it's taken a sharp turn toward health-related features.

5. Are There Any New Killer Apple Watch Apps?

Well, for some people, Pokémon Go surely counts, and it's coming to the watch. We also got a sneak peek at ViewRanger, a hiking app that leverages the new built-in GPS. Beyond that, the new watchOS 3 should let new developers build significantly more sophisticated apps, and it shouldn't be too long before some of them pop up in the App Store.

6. Where Is The iPad Headed?

Sorry, there was no significant iPad news at this event except for a more collaboration-savvy version of the iWork productivity suite. See you in 2017, iPad.

7. What's The Short-Term Apple TV Strategy?

Was the Apple TV even mentioned onstage today?

8. Did Apple Forget To Mention Anything At WWDC?

I don't think the company willfully held back cool stuff back in June so it could unveil it today. But we did learn about some software features that are tied to new hardware, such as the iPhone 7 Plus's depth-of-field portrait mode, which is due to arrive as a software upgrade later this year.

In retrospect, Apple mostly used the event to deal with the task at hand: explaining to people why they might want to buy a new iPhone or Apple Watch. That mission crowded out almost everything else, such as news relating to products that didn't get an upgrade, like the Apple TV and iPad (and Mac).

That doesn't mean that Apple isn't thinking about such matters, just that it it's doing far too much to cram all of it into a two-hour presentation. And there's every reason to think that the company will only get busier in the years to come—which might mean that no future Apple event will feel anywhere near as comprehensive.


More From The Apple Event


How A Startup Founded And Operated By Paralyzed Vets Made A Clothing Line That Matters

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American-made label Oscar Mike grew into a successful T-shirt company by appealing to military vets—and their supporters.

Strength comes in a variety of forms, including T-shirts.

Oscar Mike is a startup clothing label owned and operated exclusively by paralyzed veterans of the American military. Every piece of apparel they sell reflects the values of our armed forces, including T-shirts with a tattooed, muscular Uncle Sam, or emblazoned with the slogan, "Fight the good fight."

In 2003, Marine Noah Currier, 21, returned from combat in Iraq to his native small town of Marengo, Illinois. On his third day back, while driving to an army base, he was struck by a trucker who fell asleep at the wheel. The car rolled down an embankment, leaving Currier with a paralyzed spinal cord.

Following a painful recovery, Currier didn't want to leave his house. "I was in a dark place for a while and didn't really want to talk to a human being," he recalled.

Noah Currier, founder of Oscar Mike

Currier's perspective changed after a friend begged him to attend an adaptive sport event for veterans. "It changed my life," he said. Currier wanted to attend more, but when he asked his peers if he'd see them at the next one, they all had the same response: If I can afford it.

"I realized money was the barrier of entry for these life-changing opportunities and I just wanted to help in any way I could," he said.

The frustration sparked a desire that manifested itself in a fundraiser in which he sold T-shirts with a motto embraced by all branches of service: "He who sheds blood with me shall forever be my brother." The modified Shakespeare quote resonated with attendees, who quickly snapped up the design. It motivated Currier to think beyond single events. His vision was to help disabled vets afford sporting events, and simultaneously inspire people.

Currier decide to name his clothing label Oscar Mike, a military command meaning "get on the move." The phrase was repeatedly voiced on the radios during the invasion of Iraq, the Army version of "just do it." He applied for nonprofit status in 2011, but after the government informed him it would take close to two years to get approval, Currier shifted gears: Why not just start a business that acts and serves as a nonprofit?

Her opted for an LLC, just him and two other paralyzed veterans designing T-shirts out of a garage. To them, it was more than just a business. It was a way to stay moving.

"I feel that for myself and everybody I knew at the time, getting active or staying active was the launching pad of improving your life," explained Currier. "That's something that resonates with a lot of people because when you start an activity or set new goals in life, one thing leads to another in setting a positive chain reaction."

Currier's nimble team set about manufacturing the entire line in the U.S. It was "extremely important" for Oscar Mike to serve Americans throughout the entire process, from the manufacturer owners to the eventual buyer. Currier, accustomed to the military's fast-paced productivity, couldn't justify the lengthy process of producing fabrics in the States, shipping them overseas, then shipping them back home.

"You can have a whole list of excuses for why it can't be made in the U.S. and I understand when public companies are being steered by their shareholders and are always trying to improve their margins," explained Currier. "But with us, the margins didn't matter. If it can be made here, it should be made here."

By the time Oscar Mike was approved as a nonprofit in 2013, the young entrepreneur completed two Kickstarter fundraisers and solidified a strong organic marketing strategy by reaching out to veterans organizations. From there, it split into two divisions: a nonprofit partnering with sporting events to accommodate veterans, and a for-profit selling veterans-inspired gear. All profits, said Currier, go to the foundation.

Since 2012, Oscar Mike has doubled in size year-over-year. The company works with a dozen American manufacturing companies and employs 12, all veterans save for one.

Most importantly, the company succeeded in its initial mission: to send more than a hundred disabled vets to 10Ks and competitive sporting events like Tough Mudder or Warrior Dash. The community surrounding these events is a strong one: it quickly rallies around their wounded competitors.

"Things that people thought were physically impossible, we make possible," said Currier of amputees scaling walls and forging through freezing cold obstacle courses. The participation is two-fold: It uplifts veterans, but it also acts as the best kind of marketing for the apparel. "Everybody at a race passes us because we're always the slowest group helping guys in wheelchairs and amputees. So 5,000 people enter a race, all 5,000 of them pass us at some point and make it a point to come up to us afterward and give us hugs and congratulate us, all teary-eyed and motivated."

Oscar Mike supplies gear and branded clothing to over a dozen veterans organizations. For many, it wasn't until Currier approached them with the power of products did they consider retail ventures. It reaches an audience who can physically wear their pride.

O M American Eagle Tee

Paralyzed Veterans of America, for example, will roll out its new website featuring stories of severely disabled veterans with Oscar Mike's shirts. "It was intended to appeal to the younger generation and it does that," said executive director Sherman Gillums Jr., a retired U.S. Marine officer and fellow paralyzed veteran. "It helps freshen the message."

Within three years, Oscar Mike sales reached over half a million, a milestone Gillums attributes to not only the design and comfort of the shirts, but its unique backstory. Oscar Mike is identified with heroes who bear physical sacrifices made for their country.

"You can't help but draw together the product with what it represents," said Gillums, emphasizing the line's featured quotes that helps non-veterans understand military personnel's struggles. "These are products that tell a story."

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) collaborates with Oscar Mike for exclusive products at their events, including most recently, the Commander-in-Chief presidential forum between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

"That way we look at it: Livestrong had Nike and IAVA has Oscar Mike," said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of IAVA. Sales of Oscar Mike products are high on IAVA's website—items such as branded ripcord bracelets in an eye-catching "night vision green" meant to spark conversations.

The organization, currently the largest post-9/11 veterans group in the country, is eager to boost veteran-owned businesses, but seldom come across ones at this level. "You've got to be able to understand the culture but you also got to be able to deliver at scale, and these guys can do it all," said Rieckhoff.

"But it's not just about sales: it's about engagement," stressed Rieckhoff. "We're trying to reach a vet who has been isolated, who really hasn't been able to connect, and it might be a really cool piece of gear that gets him or her hooked in." In that sense, Oscar Mike supplies creative ways for veterans and supporters to connect with the brand and the community. "That's what we need as a small nonprofit with limited resources." So far, Oscar Mike and the IAVA partnered together on roughly 600 events.

Rieckhoff isn't surprised by what Currier has achieved. A former infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq, he knows that the live combat experience can cultivate an extremely tough entrepreneurial attitude. He witnesses veterans bringing a certain level of integrity to business. "For Noah, what he's been through in his life, starting a business might actually be one of the easier things."

That kind of grit pushed Currier's team to actively pitch Dick's Sporting Goods until they secured a meeting at their Pittsburgh headquarters. The retailer agreed to start with 50 stores.

"We believe that sports make people better," said Ron Baime, senior vice president and general merchandising manager. "Dick's has a natural connection with Oscar Mike, whose mission is to keep America and our injured veterans 'on the move' and active through sports. We've made it our mission to support initiatives that inspire and enable sports participation, such as the Oscar Mike brand."

The the plan is for the line to be in all doors by 2017. Oscar Mike wants to make amputee mannequins as part of their display, "to really put it in the public's eye," hopes Currier.

When Oscar Mike first launched, a dozen veterans organizations existed. Today there are thousands. "Corporate America was giving a lot of money to veterans causes," said Gillums of post-9/11 America. "A lot of cases it was about charity… The proliferation is a reflection of how much the country wanted to get behind veterans."

Currier welcomes the competition and sense of brotherhood within the military community. "Having a 'by us for us' organization, we were able to understand what veterans need," he said, adding, "it was about time veterans started taking care of veterans."

This fall, Oscar Mike will release a line of women's shirts and the company has been approached by big brands for licensing options. Currier, however, isn't eyeing an exit strategy anytime soon. His first priority is ensuring profits benefit the foundation. "We don't want to be giving pieces of the pie away to someone who is in it for the money," he said, though he is open to considering an investor who sees their vision.

There's a bigger story here than just Oscar Mike: Currier's story is an American success story, said Rieckhof. "I think too often people think veterans are going to be your next security guard, but they can also be your next Mark Zuckerberg," he said. "We believe veterans are rising; they're not victims, they're not broken or damaged. they are our leaders with amazing potential. …There are going to be a couple of billionaires that come out of our generation of veterans and Noah might just be one of the first."

Despite his past challenges, Currier can't help but consider himself "the happiest guy in the world" for his ability to work with peers and push them in the right direction.

"I'm still paralyzed from the neck down, but it is what it is: I've moved on," said Currier, fully embodying his company's philosophy. "All it did was open a whole new set of challenges for me to conquer."

iPhone 7: To Upgrade Or Not? It's A Harder Question Than We Thought

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Changes to Apple's new phones were almost all under the hood, but it turns out they're pretty compelling—and tempting.

Maybe you had to be there. Maybe not. But when I attended Apple's event in San Francisco today, the new iPhone 7 line looked a lot better than the leaked specs had us believing it would—especially the iPhone 7 Plus.

So the question we ask with every new phone release—should I upgrade?—is more complicated this time. When the iPhone 6s appeared last year, I had no trouble advising people to get by without 3D Touch and Live Photos, and wait another year to buy.

But this year is different, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. "Internally they have put a lot of interesting things in there," IDC analyst Tom Mainelli told me after Apple's press event. "I think if somebody was on the fence, I would have no problem advising them to upgrade."

The new phones offer an impressive lineup of upgrades, and a couple of entirely new component features. Some of them aren't game changers, like the new water-resistance rating or the new haptic-touch home button. Those things alone aren't likely to sway someone's decision to upgrade. But other things, like the multiple improvements to the cameras on both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, might make a big difference. Smartphone photography is a big, big deal, and, judging by the specs and features, Apple could have the best smartphone camera out there, in a market with an awful lot of impressive smartphone cameras. Of course, we'll test that when we can.

Both phones use a wider f1.8 aperture lens, which lets in a lot more light. Both have optical image stabilization to steady your hands. (Previously, that was a Plus feature only.) The combination of those two things alone will go a long way to remove the graininess from your shots, especially in low-light situations, an Apple rep explained to me. The new ambient light sensors also help improve low-light shots. Both phones now have four LED camera flashes instead of two. Apple's image signal processor uses AI to recognize people and objects to adjust camera settings. It performs a hundred billion computations in 25 milliseconds for every shot, Apple said.

Only the iPhone 7 Plus has the dual 12-megapixel lenses (one wide angle and one telephoto) that will probably take zoom (usually a bad experience on smartphones) to another level. When you zoom to 2X, it's all real optical zoom. As you zoom in farther than that, it's software zoom, but the software zoom looks far better, having started with real optical zoom.

Actually, as great as the dual-lens features are, the fact that they're only available on the iPhone Plus will put them out of reach for a great many would-be iPhone 7 buyers. "The camera enhancements were nice, but you only get the telephoto and new portrait mode 'bokeh' benefits if you purchase the more expensive iPhone 7 Plus," said TECHnalysis president Bob O'Donnell. "I'm not sure people will be willing to make the upgrade just for that, especially if they lose a headphone jack in the process."

And some people may want the camera benefits but won't want to carry around a Plus-sized phone. Perhaps building a dual-lens camera into a 4.7-inch screened phone is an engineering feat that Apple can't yet quite manage.

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus both got new quad-core A10 Fusion processors, which Apple says make the phones 40% faster than their predecessors, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. They also get with the times by doing away with the 16 GB and 64 GB memory options, going up to 32 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB options. These upgrades are table stakes; you expect them when you're shelling out the money to upgrade to this year's model.

Then there's the missing headphone jack. I'd argue that that's a deal breaker for just a minority of Apple users. The truth is Apple's Phil Schiller, in his presentation at Apple's event today, took most of the steam out of the big protest against the removal of the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the movement toward all-digital audio. The messaging was just about perfect.

Apple covered itself on the front end and the back end here. It showed people what a future with highly functioning wireless digital earphones looks like with its new $160 AirPods. It covered the back end by making the earphones that come in the box with the iPhone 7 connect with a Lightning cable, and included a dongle to allow people to use their old analog headphones for another year. It's just the future, and Apple isn't even really on the cutting edge of it. Other phones, including Lenovo's Moto Z, have already hit the market sans 3.5 mm jack.

And to make the decision even harder, Apple decided to make the new iPhone 7 cost exactly as much as last year's iPhone 6s.

In the end it may come down to the question of how important the new camera technology is to a perspective buyer. For some people, jittery, blurry, grainy, pixilated photos are a real buzzkill. For them, especially if they're among the millions who have yet to upgrade to the iPhone 6 line, the iPhone 7 will be very tempting indeed. For those who want a phablet, even more so.

For people like me who already have an iPhone 6s, or an iPhone 6 for that matter, it's a toss-up. And then again it comes down to the importance of the camera. I personally am disappointed in the quality of the photos I shoot with my iPhone 6s, especially in low light. And now that I've seen an Apple device that probably defeats those issues convincingly, well, I may be headed for the Apple Store once again.

Related Video: The history of Apple in under 3 minutes

Cancer Cures Could Already Exist In Big Data

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A panel set up by Obama's Cancer Moonshot program says we should make better use of existing research data.

"Reuse, and recycle" is a famous saying of the environmental movement, but cancer researchers might learn a thing or two from that mantra as well.

That's the gist of several recommendations that came out today from a blue-ribbon panel set up by the White House as part of President Obama's Cancer Moonshot program. Its audacious goal is to move the needle closer to a cure and achieve a decade's worth of progress in five years.

Today's full report, one of three that will come out this year, features 10 recommendations. They include lots of new research, such as on immunotherapy and causes of childhood cancers, as well as finding ways to minimize side effects of cancer treatments.

But pooling data is perhaps the biggest component, weaving its way through several recommendations. It would start with patients, through a network that lets them preregister online as candidates for clinical trials. In the process, they would submit cancer tissue samples to be genetically sequenced.

Each of the reports will include proposals for how to tackle cancer research and cures. Members of this panel included mainly university and hospital researchers, as well as some government officials and private-sector execs. Given the laudatory fanfare today's report received, it's a safe bet that it won't fly in the face of the upcoming other two reports—one from Vice President Joe Biden, who heads the Moonshot effort, and another from a White House task force of government departments and agencies.

Reusing And Recycling Patient Info

Instead of having to recruit participants from scratch, researchers doing clinical trials would already have a pool of willing volunteers to pull from. The online network also helps involve the majority of cancer patients who don't live close to the elite research institutes that do most clinical studies. This registry might look like an existing program run by the Broad Institute and the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston, which uses social media to recruit volunteers. It also resembles the specialized registries created by PatientCrossroads for more than 60 conditions, such as Lyme disease, kidney cancer, and obscure disorders like hypertriglyceridemia (high fat levels in blood).

The most ambitious—and potentially headache-inducing—proposal is a recommendation to build a "national cancer data ecosystem." It would link up patient databases from around the country, such as those kept by hospitals, universities, nonprofits, and government institutes so that researchers could access information like biopsy reports beyond those at their own institutions.

In a world where just transferring medical records from one doctor to the next is an ordeal, linking massive, not-yet-compatible databases is a monster undertaking. Confidentiality could also be a concern. Would every patient have to give consent to have their data made available to other researchers (even if it's anonymous)? Then there are egos: Institutions that spend years and fortunes collecting data often resist sharing it.

There are precedents, though. For instance, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has hooked up with a half-dozen hospitals and universities to form the Undiagnosed Disease Network, which pools data on super-rare conditions (like those with just a half-dozen sufferers), for which every patient record is a treasure to researchers.

An example of recycling is a proposal to "mine" past patient records to see what worked. Biobanks hold tumor samples for patients who have already gone through different kinds of cancer care, such as chemotherapy or immune system treatments. Some are successful, some aren't. Some treatments work for a while, then stop working. By comparing how a patient fared to the details of their tumor—like specific mutations and proteins present, researchers might get a better sense of why certain treatments will or won't work on certain tumors.

Bringing Kids Into The Mix

Cancer is often thought of as a disease for older people. It's also the leading cause of death from disease among children in the U.S. Childhood cancer is one of the areas that needs a lot of fresh research, because kids' tumors don't look like those of adults. They typically don't have as many genetic mutations, but they do have fusion oncoproteins—molecules formed when garbled genetic code combines what should be two separate proteins into one malformed Franken-molecule. Researchers are just beginning to figure out how these proteins form.

"That they even highlighted pediatric cancer in itself is a huge leap," says Danielle Leach of the child cancer-focused St. Baldrick's Foundation, who took part in the panel's pediatric working group. "Our needs are different and unique, and we need to look at them through a different lens than adults."

Pediatric cancer research is especially dependent on government funding, says Leach, whose son Mason died at age 5 from a brain tumor. There aren't nearly as many child cancer patients as there are adults, which makes pharma companies less interested in developing treatments. "We don't have the patient population for a billion dollar drug that's only going to go into a thousand kids," she says.

As in many cases, government funding could be the real burden for Obama's cancer plans. Back in February, the president proposed spending an extra $1 billion on the Moonshot program. Meanwhile, Congress has spent most of the year arguing over funding for the clear and present danger of Zika—with the latest impasse happening in the Senate just this week.

"Even if we don't get any of the appropriations, we will be able to begin some of the implementation," says Dinah Singer, acting deputy director of the National Cancer Institute (part of NIH), in a meeting with journalists. "But the rate obviously would be greatly enhanced with the kind of funding that the vice president has been talking about."

Getting money is especially shaky, given that this request comes from a lame duck president whose party doesn't control Congress. "I think there's a lot of commitment to cancer research and there's a lot of champions on both sides of the aisle for health care research," says Leach. "But I think how you get there and how you fund it—there are fundamental differences."

The FCC's Latest Set-Top Box Plan Would Let You Watch All TV With Apps

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But if you like your cable box, you'll be able to keep your cable box.

Back in January, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler threw a Molotov cocktail at the cable and satellite TV industry when he proposed a plan to ditch set-top boxes—which cost an average of $231 per year to rent—and instead force pay-TV companies to let customers watch television through apps.

Cable giants like Comcast hated the idea, but that wasn't even the most controversial part about it. Wheeler also wanted to make pay-TV companies provide all their data streams (scheduling, video, copy protection requirements) to any hardware company that wants to build its own set-top box or any software company, like Google, that wants to make its own apps.

Now, after seven months of gathering public and industry input, Wheeler dropped that latter requirement in a new proposal released today, but it's not really a complete victory for Big Cable.

Bottom line: You'll have the choice of keeping your cable box. Or if you prefer, you can trash the box, watch TV through an app, and pocket what you save on device rentals. But you won't get your TV on an app by some other company, such as Google. Instead, cable companies will have to provide that for you. All of this is contingent on the full FCC voting for the plan on September 29, which it probably will.

Wheeler's new plan (described in an L.A. Times Op-Ed), requires cable companies to provide customers with apps for "the device of their choosing"—defined as any platform with at least 5 million units sold. That should cover the usual suspects: all Android and iOS mobile devices, Apple and Windows computers, Apple TV, Roku players, and Roku TVs, Google Chromecast, Xbox, PlayStation, and most other smart TVs. Apps would also have to offer all the same services that set-top boxes do, including on-demand programs, DVR, fast forward, rewind, and start over functions.

Wheeler would also require TV providers to make their scheduling info available to any device the app runs on, so you could do one search across cable TV, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, or whatever other apps are on your gadget. Already devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV let you search across a bunch of apps at once, but they don't show you what's on regular TV. Some smart TVs can also search what's on cable, but they need a jerry-rigged connection to a cable box to tune in to the channels.

The biggest cable and satellite TV companies would have to provide apps for all major devices within two years, midsize cable companies would have four years, and the smallest of them would be exempt.

Wheeler's proposal doesn't mean you could watch anywhere you can get a Wi-Fi or cell signal, though. Content licensing deals are still determined by geography, and apps would likely only work in your home. "That's exactly how the apps behave today," said a FCC rep, referring to some apps that cable companies already provide. "An so we would expect it to be the same going forward." (All three FCC employees on the press call spoke "on background," and asked not to be named.)

This is by no means a done deal, however. Wheeler was appointed by President Obama, who's about to leave office. An election is coming. The Republican-controlled Congress hasn't been a fan of new FCC regulations, and the cable companies are bound to put up a fight. "While we appreciate that Chairman Wheeler has abandoned his discredited proposal to break apart cable and satellite services, his latest tortured approach is equally flawed," said Comcast in an email that came out right after the new plan was announced.

Your Smartphone Is Becoming An AI Supercomputer

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Photographic memory, instant artworks, instantaneous translation, lifelike virtual reality and much more are all coming to your pocket.

IPhone owners will get an upgrade on September 13 that allows them to find a picture of nearly anyone or anything, anywhere and from any time. Neural network artificial intelligence in the new iOS 10 performs 11 billion calculations in a tenth of a second on each photo snapped to figure out who people are and even what mood they're in.

iOS 10's new Photos app is only the latest example of a growing movement toward handheld artificial intelligence. Aipoly, an app released in January, recognizes objects and speaks their names aloud to blind people. Google Translate can replace text in one language with another language as soon as you point your camera at it. All this happens even if you can't get cell reception.

Aipoly identified not only the animal, but the breed. It says the name aloud and displays it.

Just as "the cloud" was becoming the answer to every "How does it work?" question, smartphones have started clawing back their independence, performing on their own tasks that used to require a tether to a server farm. The result is a more natural AI experience, without the annoying or creepy lag of an internet connection to a data center. "If I said, 'Hey Siri, what is this?' it would take two seconds to send a picture to the cloud [and get a response back]," says Aipoly
cofounder Alberto Rizzoli. "It kinda feels like talking to someone who just woke up." Aipoly was not the first seeing app for the blind; it was the first to identify objects instantly by cutting its dependence on the cloud and running AI on a phone.

Such instantaneous AI will take augmented reality far beyond Pokémon Go by accurately mapping the surroundings in detail to insert rich 3D objects, characters, and animations into the video feed on a phone or tablet screen. Likewise, virtual reality will start looking more genuine with mobile AI, according to Gary Brotman, director of product management at mobile chip maker Qualcomm, where he heads the machine learning platform. "To do that right, everything has to be totally realtime," he says. "So you have to be able to present the video, present the audio, and have the intelligence that drives the eye-tracking, the head tracking, gesture tracking, and spatial audio tracking so you can map the acoustics of the room to that virtual experience."

This behind-the-scenes view shows how Aipoly rapidly considers the likelihood of different options.

AI will also drive convenience features. You might see virtual assistants that use the phone's camera to recognize where you are, such as a specific street or the inside of a restaurant, and bring up relevant apps, says Rizzoli. And for once, such hyper-conveniences may not have the creep factor. If future AI doesn't need the cloud, then the cloud doesn't need your personal data.

"For privacy reasons, for latency reasons, for a variety of others, there's no reason why the locus of control for analytics and intelligence shouldn't be on the [phone]," says Brotman.

AI Inside

What's brought the power of AI to handhelds? Video games.

"People want better mobile games on their phones and their iPads," says Rizzoli. "So Apple has been particularly good, and so has Qualcomm and the other chip manufacturers, in making better performance." That's pushed the development of more powerful mobile CPUs and Graphics Processing Units. While CPUs mostly work sequentially, GPUs work in parallel on the simpler but very numerous tasks required for quickly rendering 3D graphics. AI also requires performing multiple straightforward duties in tandem.

Take what's called a "convolutional neural network"—a staple of modern image recognition. Modeled on how the brain's visual cortex works, CNNs divide the visual field into overlapping tiles and then, in tandem, filter out simple details such as edges from all of these tiles. That info goes to another layer of neurons (biological in humans or virtual in software), which might combine edges into lines; another layer might recognize primitive shapes. Each layer (of which their may be dozens) further refines the perception of the image. "You're looking at a photo, and you're identifying various elements of it at the same time," says Rizzoli. "You're identifying edges, and you're identifying what shapes [might exist]. And all of this can be done in parallel."

Google Translate in action

Smartphone chips have been up to the challenge for a few years. Even 2013's iPhone 5s supports the new people, scene, and object recognition upgrade in iOS 10; and Aipoly is working on versions that will run on the iPhone 5 as well as Android phones going back several years. But programmers have just recently been taking advantage of this power. Photo effects app Prisma, which launched in June, has been one of the early adopters.

Twenty-five-year-old Aleksey Moiseenkov created the app, which renders a smartphone photo in a choice of over 30 artistic styles, such as "The Scream," "Mondrian," and many with playful titles like "Illegal Beauty," "Flame Thrower," and "#GetUrban." The effects are rendered nearly instantaneously, which belies their complexity. An Instagram filter simply tweaks basic parameters like color, contrast, brightness, or white balance in pre-set amounts. Prisma has to analyze the image, recognize elements like shapes, lines, colors, and shading, and redraw it from scratch like Edvard Munch or Piet Mondrian might. The results can be gorgeous, making even a banal picture intriguing.

A profoundly dull photo, at left, transformed with Prisma's Paper art style, at right.

Prisma initially did all this work in the cloud, but Moiseenkov says that could hurt the quality of the app. "We have a lot of users in Asia," he says, "and we need to give the same experience no matter what the connection is, wherever the server or cloud processing is." A new version of the iPhone app that came out in August runs entirely on the phone, and Moiseenkov is working on the same shift for the Android version.

An upgrade that applies the same artistic effects to video is coming, too, possibly in September, says Moiseenkov. "Video is much more complicated in terms of overloading the servers and all that stuff," he says, so doing effects right on the phone is crucial.

An upcoming version of Prisma transform video as well as photos.

Moiseenkov and his team had to figure out from scratch how to get their AI software working on smartphones, but future programmers might have an easier time. In May, Qualcomm came out with a software developer's kit called the "Neural Processing Engine" for its Snapdragon 820 chip, which powers 2016's high-end Android phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Note 7, Moto Z and Z Force, OnePlus 3, HTC 10, and LG G5. The software juggles tasks between the CPU, GPU, and other components of the chip for jobs like scene detection, text recognition, face recognition, and natural language processing (understanding conversational speech rather than just rigid commands).

Specialized AI chips are also arriving. A company called Movidius makes VPUs—vision processing units—optimized for computer vision neural networks. (This week, chip giant Intel agreed to acquire it.) Its latest Myriad 2 chip runs in DJI's Phantom 4 drone, for instance, helping it spot and avoid objects, hover in place, and track moving subjects like cyclists or skiers.

DJI's Movidius-powered Phantom 4 drone can find its own way.

Using only about one watt of power, the Myriad 2 would be thrifty enough to run in a phone, too. Movidius has made a few vague statements about future products. In June, it announced "a strategic partnership to provide advanced vision processing technology to a variety of VR-centric Lenovo products." These could be VR headsets or phones, or both. Back in January, Movidius and Google announced a collaboration "to accelerate the adoption of deep learning within mobile devices." I asked Movidius and Google about the deals, but they wouldn't say anything more.

The iBrain

Apple has been characteristically coy about its AI plans, not saying much before it previewed iOS 10 in June.

The AI-powered Photos app is the biggest component. It uses neural networks for the deep learning process that recognizes scenes, objects, and faces in pictures to group them and make them searchable. Its Memories feature puts together collections of pictures and videos based on people in them, places or what it judges to be a significant event, like a trip. Doing all this work on the phone keeps personal information private, says Apple.

AI-generated Memories collections in iOS 10

Neural networks also power Apple's predictive typing that helps finish sentences, and AI appeared well before iOS 10. Apple switched Siri over to a neural network running on the phone back in July 2014 to improve its speech recognition.

Siri is how most app makers will plug into the iPhone's AI, for now. Apple hasn't released AI-programming tools for its A series chips the way Qualcomm has for Snapdragon, but a feature called SiriKit lets developers connect their apps so people can interact with the apps by chatting with Apple's virtual assistant.

And Apple may not be far behind Qualcomm in helping third-party developers leverage AI. It recently spent a reported $200 million on a company called Turi that makes AI tools for programmers. Developers will have more power to work with, too. The new A10 Fusion chip in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus has a CPU that runs 40% faster than in the previous generation iPhones, and the graphics run 50% faster.

As artificial intelligence continues expanding across the tech world, it seems destined to grow on phones, too. Expectations are rising that gadgets will simply know what we want and what we mean. "I can say that the large percentage of mobile apps will become AI apps," says Nardo Manaloto, an AI engineer and consultant focused on health care apps like virtual medical assistants.

Alberto Rizzoli expects to see a lot of new apps by CES in January. App creators "will follow…when more tools for deep-learning software become available, and the developers themselves become more aware of it," he says. "It's still considered to be a dark magic by a lot of computer science people…And it's not."

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