Black tie, cocktail, fancy dinners—the rules no longer apply.

Maybe you've admired (and envied) the woman in sparkly sneakers at a cocktail party. Or spotted a jumpsuit at a black-tie gala. Or realized that your classic white T-shirt is a perfect match for the brocade skirt idling in the back of your closet. Dress codes, once a set of rigid rules about how women should adorn themselves, have evolved.

Women are ready for a change—but many brands are not. Most continue to follow the same playbook, particularly in evening wear, with looks designed to check the box on "black tie" or "cocktail."

Sachin & Babi, on the other hand, sees these disappearing boundaries as an opportunity. The New York-based fashion label, led by husband-and-wife team Sachin and Babi Ahluwalia, made its name over the last seven years with sophisticated silhouettes and bold colors. In its early years, Sachin & Babi hewed to tradition.

"There was this gold standard that a lot of the senior designers set: This is evening wear—beaded tulle dress and big princess gowns," Sachin says. The brand's looks reflected that standard, with heavy fabrics and a ladylike sense of occasion.

Then, this past year, they started to pay closer attention to customer feedback offered up at their trunk shows—and ultimately decided to turn their approach to evening wear on its head.

"The world does not dictate the way she dresses, she is dictating it today," Sachin says, referring to the modern fashion client.

The results were on display last week at the Sachin & Babi showcase in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Models stood tall in the dappled September light, wearing soft lace and ruffles that fluttered as they shifted their weight and slowly changed poses. At the window, ballerinas in signature looks from the collection moved through the classic positions, en pointe.

"We looked at ballet in motion, which is a great juxtaposition—these women are so graceful, but at the same time they come from a position of strength," Sachin says. "That dictated a lot of the terms—the choice of fabrics, the silhouettes, the ruffles. We made our fabrics a little bit softer, free moving, to have a relative ease."

In addition, many of the looks are designed for versatility. Sachin nods to a black-and-white dress, its black bow, tied at the neck, an echo of Paris. "She could go for lunch outside and be very trendy, but at the same time she could wear high heels and use this dress for a cocktail event," he explains. "She can incorporate it in so many different places."

The challenge for designers today is to deliver that versatility without compromising on style.

"She wants fashion," he says. "She doesn't want to wear a little black dress anymore."

Just don't tell Holly Golightly.

Between consignment e-tailers and luxury-label rental sites, consumers are approaching designer fashion with a whole new mentality.

The Kardashians don't exemplify thriftiness, so it was surprising when Khloé, Kendall, and Kylie partnered with the luxury consignment site The RealReal in August. The sisters listed 200 pieces from their personal closets, ranging from Chanel purses to Christian Louboutin heels, at nearly 80% off retail value. "Now you can own pieces from my closet!" Khloé Kardashian proudly tweeted to her 21 million followers.

The entire collection sold out within 24 hours, a rep for The RealReal confirmed.

The reality TV stars' participation confirmed the site as a destination for all incomes and demographics, including celebrities. Today, luxury rental e-retailers, consignment shops, and loan services are destigmatizing what was once considered the domain of aspirational shoppers. More than that, it's democratizing high fashion and shifting how we buy (and keep) designer clothing.

Even Disney Stars Wear Designer

The constant influx of celebrity news, celebrity stylists, and brand participation on social media means we know everyone's fashion tastes. Whereas previous generations may have only been familiar with a few design houses—Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, Yves Saint Laurent, for instance—today's woman is familiar with dozens more, ranging from big (Balmain, thanks to Kim Kardashian) to emerging (Jason Wu, thanks to the Michelle Obama).

Many women once dreamed of emulating Elizabeth Taylor's wardrobe—and it remained just that: a dream. But today, a savvy shopper could potentially wear whatever Julia Roberts donned for the Oscars. The shopper might only rent the gown for a night, but the Cinderella moment is no longer a fairy-tale fantasy.

"Luxury is changing—and changing for the more value-centric consumers who are much greater in number than pure luxury [products]," says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst of the market research company The NPD Group.

"Something that used to be attainable purely for the elite is now becoming more accessible to those who are willing to splurge," says style expert Jacqui Stafford. "It's still a splurge, there's no question about it. You're still going to be spending at least $500 [to rent] a gown that you might have to pay $5,000 to buy."

It's not just Oscar winners who inspire the masses. Teen stars also employ celebrity stylists who deck them in Preen and Vetements. "These labels are definitely more accessible now, and we have social media to thank for that," Stafford says. "Even Disney stars are sitting front row at Paris Fashion Week shows. You're seeing the younger demographic really embrace couture, bringing it to a new audience."

That means a growing percentage of teens and millennials now look way beyond what's available at the neighborhood mall. They want Gucci, Cartier, and Chanel and they're getting savvier when it comes to acquiring those marquee designer brands. They are not a demographic to ignore: According to a recent study, millennials spend $200 billion annually and are set to outspend baby boomers by 2017.

Many of The RealReal's customers are millennials with strong brand loyalty. And they tend to adhere to a specific strategy. They start as first-time buyers, enjoying their discounted designer item until they eventually tire of it and resell it. They then take the money earned to the primary market—to, say, Neiman Marcus, where they buy a new high-end item. Once it's been seen enough times by their social group, they sell it in the consignment space. Then the process repeats itself. In a way, they're learning about investment, depreciation, and retaining value, but in the context of designer fashion.

"They're saving their money for that special Celine bag, and when they're done with it, they're consigning it," says Rati Sahi, chief merchant for The RealReal. "You see them think differently about their purchases. They're calculating [whether] they can get 60% back with the resale value."

They're willing to pay, up to a point. "Millennials are interested in high fashion but not willing to pay those high prices," Cohen says. "So discount sites, secondhand sites, and stores, as well as auction sites, do well for the luxe millennial."

If Selena Gomez's fans are wearing Chanel in greater numbers, how does that affect the label's mystique? "Ease of access to luxe helps, but also hurts," Cohen says. "The luxe market is also so accessible it loses some of the panache."

Style Gone Social

Former interior designer Sallie Giordano was surrounded by professional women in New York City who complained of the increasing cost of maintaining their wardrobes. They had full social calendars: speaking engagements, conferences, galas. With designer retailer sales so frequent, consumers "felt stupid" if they purchased full price, Giordano says.

In April 2015, Giordano launched Couture Collective, a luxury clothing rental membership club. It's like a "timeshare" of seasonal designer apparel. Members pay an annual fee of $250, then each season, they can borrow up to five dresses from, say, Valentino and Christian Dior, after they've purchased a one-fifth share in an item, at 20% of the retail price. "If you look at the statistics, people will wear a dress three or four times and then they consider it an old dress," says Giordano, who says she sees lots of women who will only wear current season styles.

Couture Collective's clientele ranges from wealthy women to upper-middle-class aspirational shoppers, all looking to showcase a well-kept designer closet.

"I think the average person is interested in wearing these [designer] styles because honestly, they're better styles," Giordano says, noting how high-end garments are well made with quality fabrics and flattering cuts. "When you wear these dresses, there's a huge difference. You just feel special and confident."

For Couture Collective's clientele, there's an appealing ease to the idea of renting: No need to store or care for items they intend to wear once. "It's not about ownership anymore," Giordano says. "It's about being able to do something without all the responsibilities of ownership … This allows them to wear the trends of the designers and not feel ridiculous then they're sitting unworn in their closet the next season."

Social media has certainly changed the amount of times we wear an article of clothing. Couture Collective's clients don't want to repeat an outfit, especially if their event is photographed for publication on Instagram or Facebook.

The Instagramming of outfits was a consideration for Armarium, an on-demand luxury rental site that launched in November 2015. It is a true high-fashion lover's dream, featuring selections from the top design houses as well as emerging international labels. While the options on Rent the Runway can feel a bit sartorially safe, Armarium caters to those looking to get noticed in fashion-forward garments. Some offerings are exclusive to Armarium, which directly negotiates with fashion houses.

"Social media has drastically changed the game of how we access products, particularly with statement pieces," Armarium cofounder and CEO Trisha Gregory says. Her business works in tandem with retail and e-commerce, with the goal of serving as a complement to full-price investment staples like black pants or a white shirt. Armarium partnered with Net-a-Porter to assist customers in putting together an ensemble that's part rented, part purchased. For example, you can rent a statement Sonia Rykiel tunic from Armarium, then link out to Net-a-Porter to finish the look with a splurge trouser or investment stiletto.

"This is a smart way to complement [a customer's] existing wardrobe and the pieces she will buy for the season," says Gregory, whose clientele is made up primarily of women aged 28-34. Helping customers discover new items is a big aspect of the service; the full range of offerings are visible on the site and there are also showrooms with experienced stylists on hand. "We want to give them access to shopping in an innovative way," Gregory says.

Armarium sees two types of renters. The first is the busy, high-net-worth individual who values convenience. She's on the move, attending multiple conferences or vacationing in St. Barts. "We're packing her bags and getting her out the door, easing her schedule," Gregory says. "We're seeing the stigma [around renting] debunked with what the high-net-worth individual thought about the concept of renting.... For them, this is about access to statement pieces that aren't in the market most times."

Then there's what they call the "HENRY," the high-earner-but-not-rich-yet aspirational shopper. She's social media-savvy and cares about brand identity. In Gregory's words, it's "very hard" for her to re-wear pieces. Both types are return customers, on average 28% of the time. Business is booming: Sales have tripled since Armarium launched its mobile app in April, with a 40% month-over-month growth of app downloads and site visits.

"Women are starting to shop in a different way," Gregory says. "People want an experience, and that's what we strive to give them. This is basically a celebrity offering."

Less Is Now More

One thing celebrities have easy access to that the average woman does not: bling.

Flont is a jewelry loan service set to launch this fall. It plans to do for bling what Couture Collective does for fashion. Flont lets customers borrow a certain amount of designer jewelry at different membership rates. For $199 a month, you get $60,000 worth of jewelry a year. Up your monthly fee to $1,999 and you're entitled to $100,000 worth of jewelry over 12 months. Designers include red carpet favorites like Irene Neuwirth and Paige Novick.

But why would the well-to-do woman rent when she could buy? Flont's founder Cormac Kinney points to the private-jet industry as a comparison.

"Certainly, if you can afford a NetJets membership, you can afford a jet—but that's not the point. The point is convenience," he says. "It's much more convenient to let someone maintain it and you just use it when you need it."

The company commissioned a survey sampling U.S. women with a minimum household income of $65,000 who had purchased $2,000 or more in fine 18K gold jewelry in the last 12 months. They found that 88% said they would buy a piece they loved even if it was worn by someone else before, and 75% were interested in jewelry sharing.

Many don't want the complications that come with owning burglar-bait. Jewelry insurance, for example, adds an extra layer of cost, which can run over $10,000 a year. With Flont, insurance is included.

Then there are those who, inspired by the cult decluttering bible The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, simply want less stuff. Excess is no longer chic.

"A lot of young women out there think, 'I want to have a great dress and great piece of jewelry and I'm willing to spend a few hundred dollars but I don't want to own it,'" says Milton Pedraza, CEO of the consulting firm Luxury Institute. On the other end, baby boomers now see an alternative to constant consumption: "Many older women want to declutter their closets. They don't want to be wasteful."

This mentality inspired VillageLuxe, a community-based fashion borrowing site that connects women's closets. It extends the age-old "can I borrow that?" philosophy across entire neighborhoods, like an Airbnb for fashion.

"There's this sense of wastefulness and this big gap between my ability to wear more than three pieces at a time out of my 300 pieces," says Julia Gudish Krieger, founder and CEO of VillageLuxe. "The [designer rental market] is focused on that aspirational consumer, but I think you polarize and leave out a whole big part of the market of people who don't need the money—it's just the sense of wastefulness."

Krieger launched the site in July 2015 after asking herself, Which of my assets that I don't use every single day would people want to rent? "After my house and my car, it's my closet," she says. (Though, in New York, one's closet might actually top that list.)

"I'm such a believer in the sharing economy," says Krieger, a former VC. "I think it's where the world is heading in general, and it's not just that people are becoming more efficient with how they monetize things when they're not using them. The more interesting element is the social barriers between what's mine and what's yours have blended so much more in the last five years."

Village Luxe is currently invite only, with a heavy emphasis on influencers and fashionistas who lend as well as borrow. As of August, more than 10,000 women were on the wait list. Current members are quite active, having already listed over 7,000 pieces. (VillageLuxe intends to open the list once they've scaled the company.) For the moment, members include Upper East Side wives with extensive jewelry collections and edgy fashion bloggers like Leandra Medine, i.e.,The Man Repeller.

The startup emphasizes vintage styles as well as current collections. Many of their clothes are garments you can't find anywhere else, like an Alaïa cocktail dress from the '90s. "We actually had Vogue start borrowing from us for editorials," Krieger says.

Investing 101

Like The RealReal, Village Luxe is watching customer habits shift in real time.

"Once [our members] find out that VillageLuxe exists, they buy fewer but much more expensive pieces—statement pieces—because you know you can pull value out of them between wears," Krieger says. "Then you won't feel bad about that McQueen blazer that you really had your eye on, which you can physically only wear once a month with different groups of people." This buy-and-share mentality, Krieger hopes, will motivate shoppers to make smarter decisions.

These sites can also alter the calculus of hemming and hawing over a pricey outfit. A customer is more likely to swipe their credit card if they know they can make some of their money back. "Women list things as soon as they buy them—they'll list the items sometimes before it's even arrived."

Krieger says that aspirational shoppers especially are changing their strategies. They're more likely to go for a few select designer items than whatever is on the shelf at H&M or Zara. They see it will actually pay for itself and even create a revenue stream. "They can justify going higher market," she said.

A high overlap exists between the renters and the lenders, with over 40% who lend using their earnings as credit to borrow. "There's circuitry in the market," Krieger says. Women now think one step ahead when it comes to their wardrobe, debating what's worth what and where to put their next dollar.

It's a whole new way of shopping—and experts don't see the trend waning. As Giordano says, "Once you start wearing designer, it's really hard to go back."

Bay Area nonprofits are being priced out of the Valley as salaries and overhead costs continue to skyrocket

When you imagine a typical nonprofit, you may picture a soup kitchen, a community center, or a homeless shelter. While such services still exist, many nonprofits now design apps, build websites, and design digital tools that help deliver social programs and services to those in need.

"A lot of organizations that were previously not integrating technology into their programs have quickly realized that you can't do work in the social sector or the public health sector without embracing technology, because it's cost effective and impactful," says Bhupendra Sheoran, the executive director of Youth Tech Health (YTH), a San Francisco Bay Area-based nonprofit organization. "Almost every organization that we work with has some level of technology integration in their organization and their programs," he adds.

Nonprofits Getting Priced Out Of The Valley

One might then assume that Silicon Valley and the surrounding Bay Area would be the ideal place for a tech-focused nonprofit to set up shop. After all, the region is packed with tech talent, and its local tech companies regularly boast about their commitment to helping nonprofit organizations in their communities, as it helps attract talent and can be good for business overall.

But in reality, the skyrocketing cost of living is taking its toll on vital community institutions, while a war for talent continues to drive tech workers' salaries beyond the reach of the nonprofit sector. Average salaries of tech workers across the U.S. jumped 7.7% to $96,370 annually, according to the latest annual salary survey by Dice. In Silicon Valley, that average is north of six figures.

"Just because you have decided that social change is your passion and you want to make a difference doesn't mean you should be penalized and not paid living wages," Sheoran says, adding, "In the last few years, because the salary gap changed significantly, with tech salaries going really, really high, that has driven up the price of real estate, the price of goods, and everything else in the Bay Area."

Ballooning salaries and perks in the tech industry, explains Sheoran, have been detrimental to local nonprofits like YTH, who now struggle to provide the services many have come to rely on.

"We aren't able to hire these high-quality coders and developers to work with us, we can't afford their rates, they're totally beyond our reach," he says. "We end up having to work with folks who are willing to do this as part of their corporate social responsibility."

CSR Contributions Won't Cut It

But taking advantage of the kindness of neighboring tech giants is only a Band-Aid solution, explains Sheoran. "That is a fantastic initiative," he says. "The challenge is that these staff members have their full-time jobs, and when they work with organizations like ours they are extremely dedicated, they are really passionate, they really want to help, but it's a capacity issue." Holding down a full-time job and then being expected to work with a nonprofit like Sheoran's "where the requirements are pretty intense" is understandably difficult to manage.

The type of support provided by the technology industry in the Valley also doesn't always match the needs of the area's nonprofits, explains Naldo Peliks, the chief operations officer of Centro Community Partners, an Oakland-based nonprofit that provides entrepreneurial resources for underserved Bay Area communities via its Business Planning App.

"We get a lot of in-kind support," says Peliks, for legal and strategic advice. "We receive a grant from Google, and with that we receive some advisory services and support from Google's team," he says. "That's great for giving guidance, but one of our biggest challenges is finding engineers to commit their time to help us build technology."

While tech giants are willing to loan their local nonprofits a coder or adviser for a few hours here and there, Peliks says without consistent staff it becomes very difficult to complete large projects in a timely manner. Not only does that mean those in need receive tech-based solutions and services at a slower pace, but speed is also vital in the development of technology-based solutions, as supporting operating systems and hardware quickly become obsolete. "We're obviously developing technology here, and technology isn't something that you develop over a 20-year cycle, this is stuff that has to happen quickly," he says.

In spite of being based in the technology capital of the world, Centro has had to hire a Ukraine-based Android developer and use freelancers based in Venezuela. "We have multiple people in different locations that contribute small pockets of hours, so in the end we develop a lot slower," says Peliks.

Donors Don't Like To Pay For Salaries And Operational Costs

The financial support these nonprofits receive can help alleviate the talent gap, but funders are traditionally less interested in donating money toward overhead costs and staff, often the two greatest areas of financial need for nonprofits.

"Traditionally, larger funders like to name things—like naming an office or a building or a sculpture or a project, something you can point your finger at—but it's more difficult to point your finger at people's salaries and the portion of the utility bill that you're paying," said June Sugiyama, the director of the Vodafone Americas Foundation, which provides financial support to technology-focussed nonprofit organizations.

Sugiyama adds that savvy funders have begun to make donations that are in part dedicated to covering operational expenses, but many donors still prefer to see tangible, direct results from their contributions.

"You can't provide as much as you want if you don't have the staff to provide it," she says. "In the long run, the recipients of these services are the ones who are losing out."

How long until blockchain technology makes banking faster?

For the last four years, Ripple Labs has been working to develop and scale a new technical infrastructure for sending money between banks and across borders using distributed ledger technology—the same stuff that powers bitcoin transactions. But instead of using bitcoin to move money, Ripple uses a digital asset called XRP. Unlike bitcoin, XRP is not a currency. It's a digital asset that carriers value across a blockchain system. The company's goal is to make the transfer of money instant and cheap.

It may not seem like a gargantuan task at first glance, but consider that in the U.S. we still can't send money between two different banks with any expediency. It takes JPMorgan Chase 1-2 days to send money from one of its clients accounts to an account at another bank using Chase Pay. Even Venmo, a PayPal-owned app that lets people send each other money, only makes speedy transactions when exchanges take place on the platform. To get cash from Venmo into your bank account takes a day or two. In an on-demand world, days are eternities.

International remittances, Ripple's area of focus, can take anywhere from one to four days depending on how it is sent. When two banks have integrated with Ripple, they settle funds transferred immediately. For instance if you were to transfer money in your bank account to a friend's bank account in Germany, your bank would take your money, convert it to XRP, and send it to the bank in Germany, which would then convert it to local currency and put it in your friend's account. Via Ripple this happens instantly. Because the transaction is largely automated it makes it less expensive than traditional money transfers too.

This strategy has largely paid off for the company. As of today, it's raised nearly $93.6 million in funding from big name investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and IDG Capital. It has offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, and Sydney. It's also working with the Federal Reserve on how payments can expedited more quickly in the U.S. But that doesn't mean that it's a gravy train ride to the top for this blockchain company.

Since launching in 2012, the company has only signed on 15 banks into its network, which span the U.K, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Canada, and China. These include banks like Santander, UBS, ReiseBank, CIBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Siam Commercial Bank, and ATB Financial. While Ripple can tout some big-name banks, its still only works with a tiny share of worldwide banks. For perspective, there were slightly more than 6,000 FDIC insured institutions in the U.S. alone as of August. Ripple has also signed partnerships, which it hopes will spread its network wider. Two are with Fortune 500 consultancies Accenture and Deloitte, entities that could encourage their banking clients to sign on with Ripple. The company is also working with U.K payments network Earthport, which aims to better connect major world banks, and CGI, a firm that has integrated Ripple into a payment gateway for financial services clients. But even with its existing progress, the slog to world domination is likely to take a while for Ripple.

Blockchain companies like Ripple hold a lot of promise for the future of banking, but the technology hasn't proven itself. Though certain states in the U.S. have begun framing rules around cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, blockchain technology itself hasn't been addressed. Over the summer, the European Union decided it would monitor blockchain efforts rather than creating laws around it. As long as regulatory bodies are unsure how to handle distributed ledger systems legally, banks may be wary to adopt it.

While Ripple and other blockchain innovators slowly grow, consumer level solutions are coming to the fore. TransferWise, a Swedish company, currently offers to transfer money within 1 to 2 days for less money than it would normally cost to send cash across borders. It also promises to give customers an agreed-upon exchange rate for their money up front. Meanwhile PayPal's Xoom has been expanding its Instant Deposit program to certain banks in India and Pakistan.

In the U.S. same-day ACH is coming. That means that soon banks will be able to settle transfers send and receive money within a day (though this service may only be offered to customers with lower risk profiles depending on the bank or come with a fee). To send money domestically, Zelle, a bank-backed peer-to-peer payment app, is launching soon, with the intent of settling money quickly. Square Cash already provides instant settlements for its customers.

"I won't pretend we don't have a long way to go," says Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple's COO and president. He thinks that where perhaps Ripple has an advantage over some of these other players is that its technological infrastructure makes tracking money more transparent and less reliant on humans. Banks are responsible for tracking money sent and received, so when transactions don't happen they way they're supposed and money goes missing, banks are supposed to have the answers. What's appealing about blockchain technology, says Garlinghouse, is that it automatically documents how money moves in its ledgered system.

"I have had very senior people at the largest banks in the United States say to me if all you do is solve the transparency of the transaction, they are in," he says. As the Financial Times points out however, transparency may prove to be a double-edged sword. Banks want to see how money is moving from one institution to another, but they don't want other banks to have insight into their operations. Still, Banks ranging from Goldman Sachs to Deutsche Bank are currently exploring blockchain technology and its potential use in compliance reporting as well as smart contracts. It just may be a long time before the promise of blockchain technology and instant transactions becomes a reality for the majority of people.

Getting "bogged down" in detail is sort of the point.

There are lots of necessary evils at work, with meetings at the top of most people's lists. And of all of them, perhaps the greatest displeasure is reserved for the one you all suffer through together: the weekly staff meeting. Since it's the only time your whole team meets as one on a regular basis, you'd think it would be really valuable. Instead, it's a time-suck, and afterward people trudge back to their desks thinking, "Did I really need to be there for that?"

Why is it so damn hard to make weekly meetings consistently productive? My interest in this this question stems from my own anxiety about my staff meetings. To benchmark myself over the years, I've interviewed over a dozen fellow CEOs on the topic. As it turns out, virtually none of them feel great about their staff meetings, and their approaches vary quite a bit.

But there are patterns. Here are three that I've picked up and adapted along the way to make my own weekly meetings less painful and more productive.

1. Bring Emotions To The Table

You've got limited time and unlimited topics, so people's feelings probably aren't your first agenda item. But they should be, quite literally. Like it or not, each person brings their own personal emotional state to the table, so the group dynamic can shift from week to week as a result. Humans don't check their emotions at the door—instead, emotions drive our behavior. Although western work culture often expects a robotic consistency to the way we work, even the most seasoned executive feels anger, joy, and anxiety.

To turn our emotional state into an asset, we begin each staff meeting with a simple check-in: How are you feeling? Going around the room, we share—briefly—what's going on for us in that moment. This only takes a few minutes. Sometimes, we learn that one of us is angry after finishing a really difficult meeting. Other times, one of us is excited about a big win. Together, the group acknowledges and embraces the mood. It sets a tone of openness and trust that leads to more productive conflict during the meeting.

2. Get In The Weeds And Stay There

Weekly meetings aren't forums for long-term strategic discussions. Those tend to require deep preparation, last longer than a weekly meeting allows, and crowd out the crucial operational discussions that drive performance week to week. Tactical execution is very important, and in a healthy organization, weekly staff meetings help keep that execution coordinated. Staff meetings are unproductive for trying to do too much, not too little.

At Inkling, we follow a modified version of the guidance outlined in , Patrick Lencioni's fantastic resource on the topic. Instead of discussing strategy at our weekly meetings, we allocate four contiguous hours each month for those discussions, and an entire day once per quarter. We do deeper preparation work for those sessions.

Our weekly staff meetings, on the other hand, focus on in-the-moment coordination. We deal with operational stuff and review the key performance indicators: pipeline growth, sales performance, R&D progress, and the like. Our less frequent strategy meetings tackle questions of market alignment, company culture, and long-range planning. Those topics don't need weekly focus and attention. Tactical execution does.

3. Don't Set The Agenda In Advance

By default, teams follow agendas that have been set a day or two in advance by leaders. But for weekly meetings, this is folly. By gathering items a day in advance, at least 20% of the week has elapsed between the time when you set the agenda and when you meet!

Instead, we identify items right at the beginning of our weekly meeting and prioritize them on the spot—this way we can focus on areas of disagreement or resource contention. The more painful, the more important. When debates start spinning into strategic, long-term conversations, we park them and move them over to a strategy meeting. (If they're urgent, we set aside separate time sooner.) Debates and discussion stay focused on what needs to get done this week. That keeps the group operationally focused, and frees everyone to go execute independently for the rest of the week.

But Whatever You Do, Keep It Consistent

These three tips won't work if you can't stick with them consistently, though. To stay on track, we use the same printed sheet of paper each week to walks us through our emotional check-in, our updates, our KPIs, our agenda suggestions, and the decisions we've made that need to be communicated. It's old-school, but it keeps us honest, and the hard-copy approach minimizes distractions from laptops and phones. The flow of our meeting is very consistent week to week.

Every team finds a unique rhythm—there's no right answer—but finding one that works and sticking with it over time is critical. With a little consistency, people are trained to contribute in the right ways each week, instead of just sitting there passively until it's over. Embracing the emotion in the room can help unlock vulnerability and trust, staying tactical helps you focus on operational coordination, and dealing with in-the-moment needs ensures your agenda is fresh.

But without a rhythm like this, and if you mix up strategic and tactical conversations, your teams won't accomplish either very effectively. A dysfunctional leadership team breeds lackluster execution. Thankfully for your entire company, the opposite is also true.

The DNA testing company and the governor's office are aiming for learnings that might help keep Nevadans (and the rest of us) healthier.

Consumer genomics company 23andMe has seen a big spike in inbound requests from researchers that want to study its 1.2 million-strong genetics database. Now, it's collaborating with one of its biggest research partners yet: The governor's office in Nevada.

The goal for the joint research study is to work with local partners to better understand the various population-wide health risks facing citizens in a state that ranks 37th for public health. 23andMe is offering free access to its $199 spit test to the first 5,000 Northern Nevadans who qualify for the trial. In return, they'll receive a report on their ancestry and some health traits, including whether they carry a genetic risk for disorders like cystic fibrosis.

Those who sign up won't do the test from home. Rather, they'll show up in person to the Renown Medical Center to watch an instructional video to better understand the saliva collection process, register for an account, and share a sample. The genetic data can be downloaded securely at a later point from 23andMe, and it will be stored for research purposes at the Desert Research Institute.

23andMe was eager to take this study to Nevada, according to a spokesperson, as it's "socio-economically diverse and ethnically representative of the Southwestern United States, and includes multiple generations of the same family."

The Governor Gives It A Go

The first participant to participate in the trial is Governor Brian Sandoval (R.), who was incidentally the first Republican to endorse the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. "Nevada's greatest resource is, and always has been, our people," he says in a statement, adding that he believes the study will create "incredible potential for new scientific discoveries and encourage citizens just like myself to take a proactive role in self-care and ultimately change the way we think about our health moving forward."

The governor's office is providing financial support to the initiative as part of its ongoing "Precision Medicine" efforts. It is following in the footsteps of the White House's $215 million initiative, which involves treating and preventing disease by considering each individual's genes, environment, and lifestyle.

23andMe's is calling on research partners such as Reno, Nevada-based health system Renown Health, as well as the environmental research group Desert Research Institute, to help it study issues such as the effect of air quality on Nevadans and their risk for diabetes and other diseases. The researchers are starting with a small cohort of study participants, but they hope what they learn will be a window into better understanding the major population health risks facing Nevada's approximately 2.8 million residents.

For Renown Health, it's far more than just a research study. Guided by the results, CEO Anthony D. Slonim says he aims to use predictive modeling to understand disease across a population based on a range of demographic factors, including age, gender, or location. The company is providing approximately 300,000 de-identified medical records that are at least five years old for the study, and its foundation is also funding the trial.

"Together we want to change health and health care in our state—from a state that has struggled to get out of the lowest quartile of health rankings to one that is a role model for health innovation," Slonim says. "We can begin to understand how environmental factors can help predict who may be at risk, allow for quicker diagnoses, and encourage the development of more precise treatments," adds Joseph Grzymski, the principal investigator of the study.

Roushan Christofellis wants to give price-conscious consumers a choice when it comes to eating healthily and cheaply—and in their cars.

The pioneers of the "fast-casual" restaurant world—including Shake Shack and Chipotle—still lack one staple ingredient of the classic fast-food dining experience: A drive-thru window. Enter Salad and Go, a restaurant chain based in Arizona that is selling healthy meals for less than $6 from a traditional drive-thru window.

"We kept saying over and over again, why can't I just get something great tasting and good for you with the same convenience, speed, and price of traditional drive-thru fast food?" says Roushan Christofellis, who founded the chain in 2013. So, the former elementary school teacher created one. Here, she discusses the inspiration behind her idea and how the Salad and Go concept is evolving.

What inspired you to create Salad and Go?

Our story started about five years ago. I was just about to turn 30. My husband's a few years older than me. We both started having our parents deal with some health issues, specifically heart disease, which is really hard, obviously, when you are watching your parents go through [everything from] heart attacks to bypass surgery. It was kind of this unique point where we were seeing our parents as young in our eyes, and we were old enough to know that that's going to be us very soon. And so that unique perspective made it really clear to us that your health is something not to be taken for granted.

We thought that as long as you went to the gym and you [stayed at a] good healthy weight, that meant you were healthy, and what we realized was we were not putting the right food into our bodies and we were really taking our health for granted. So, we started taking a close look at the food we were eating and we did our own research, and we watched movies like Food Matters and Fork Over Knife. And the message became very clear that food is medicine and you are what you eat, and there are these nutrient-rich foods and these healthy fats that we're really missing from our diets.

How did you decide to change your diet?

We started first at the grocery store, like, okay, grocery shop, cook from home, control what we're eating. But it honestly didn't last long, and I'm sure a lot of people experience this. You're working full-time, and if you do want to get to the gym or do something after work and have meetings run late, by the time we even got home to start cooking, it was 7 p.m. I'm starving. I just want to eat. The last thing I want to do now is cook.

We found ourselves to be almost jealous of those people that would swing through the drive-thru from their air-conditioned car and be done in five minutes. It was frustrating. You either had to succumb to eating traditional drive-thru fast food if you wanted to enjoy the speed and convenience and affordability, or you were able to eat good food. We almost felt like consumers were being forced to choose between their health, and convenience and affordability.

So you and your husband decided to start your own restaurant. What was the process behind that?

We decided we were going to do something about this, and we did our research, and we quickly found that there's a reason high-quality, fresh ingredients are definitely more expensive. To be a true alternative to drive-thru fast food, we needed to make these expensive ingredients and be able to offer the same price point as drive-thru fast food. We're not going to be able to charge $12 for a salad and expect that someone is going to trade up from their $5, $6 combo meal for a $12 salad.

So, we said, if we're going to create change, we're going to need a true alternative, and that means match their speed, price, convenience, but offer that great-tasting, good food. So that's where we really had to reengineer that business model to make up for the high food costs.

When Burger King and McDonald's come out with salads, they still have the same amount of sugar as a soda. So how are you making this price point work?

We have that micro footprint. It's a 656-square-foot building. We're small. And what that does is it lowers our startup cost, our building cost, our equipment cost. It's cheaper to operate it, and what happens is this unique space transfers over and allows us to be faster. It makes a very streamlined operation. And then, of course we have this monoproduct. We specialize in salads. We're not trying to be everything to everyone. By specializing in something, it means that we can not only be really great at it, but we're also buying fewer ingredients, and we're buying a lot of those ingredients. Since we're able to purchase thousands of pounds of romaine a day, for example, we've been able to partner with farmers and cut out the middleman. It makes the whole situation a lot less complicated.

[We also have] a distribution center where we're able to now have one delivery location for all these farmers, for all our produce, so we can buy these large amounts and get fresh products every day. And then we can consolidate that labor to help reduce the risk of food safety, and create this system. Our distribution center is located within 45 minutes of all of our six locations. The restaurant industry standard is to have food costs at 28%. Well, ours are 36%. So, you have to get that 8% somewhere. That's why our labor is a little bit less. The operating cost is where the biggest change comes from. Most restaurants are going to have close to 20% for expenses. Ours are 14%, and that's why we're able to put more into our food.

You said that what makes it easier is that it's a monoproduct, but the name of the parent company is "And Go Concepts." Do you have other Blank And Go concepts in mind?

We started & Go Concepts with the idea that we didn't want to limit ourselves. We believe in Salad and Go staying as that monoproduct and really focusing on that. And I think that's always an option. If we can prove this model, which we have, there could be some room for growth. So, we'll have to see.

And do you have a timeline for when you'd like to cross state lines?

We do. We're hoping in the next 18 to 24 months. We say, we're going to create change in America. We'll start with Gilbert, [Arizona].

This concept was borne in the suburbs, but it could revolutionize poor neighborhoods. Have you thought about that at all? What are your general thoughts on the way food is distributed and accessed in the U.S.?

What's really cool is we proved that this is not a middle class concept. This is not an upper middle class concept. And that is what drives us every day. That is our mission. We'll have people say, 'I would pay $14 for your salad," and we say, "Well, if you're willing to spend $14 for a salad then clearly you're doing something right." You value your food and you can afford it, and you have that luxury. But what's really great is we have people that come to us and say, 'I have swapped you out from my normal drive-thru stomping ground.' And that's what's so cool: Our salads and our price are the same as a traditional drive-thru salad.

They're 48 oz. in size, so they're much larger than what you would get anywhere else. And we were recently able to up our organic offering. Now all of our kale, spinach, mixed greens, cucumbers, and apples are organic. So, now you're getting a salad with a bunch of freshly chopped organic ingredients and house-made dressings for $5.74. So it's making it virtually where there's no excuse now. That's what we're trying to do is make it where there's no excuse. There's options now. I think that's pretty huge, that we were able to dismiss people saying, 'Oh, I can't eat healthy because it's too expensive or it's not convenient.'

What advice do you have for people who feel like they're getting to the end of that time in their lives where they can make a pivot like you did?

My advice would be to make sure you're going into it for the right reasons, and to believe that what you're doing is going to create that change that you're looking for. Because it's full of sacrifice, it's full of hard work. I mean, you're all in. And it doesn't necessarily get easier, it just gets different. I was teaching and I loved what I was doing. I think that's also why we've been successful. I have to be doing something I believe in, whether that was teaching or now doing something like this, where I really feel like I'm creating change in consumers' lives, that's what drives it every day, and makes me want to keep going.

Cole Haan taps into its long history of craftsmanship with these loafers and oxfords that take 24 hours to make by hand.

Today, Cole Haan unveils a new collection of leather loafers and oxfords that are entirely made in the small town of Lewiston in Maine. It has partnered with five expert leatherworkers who make each pair by hand, a process that takes more than 24 hours. It's part of the company's strategy to tap into its long history of artisanal craftsmanship.

Given that most shoes in this country are made in places like China, India, and Indonesia, it's sometimes hard to imagine that the U.S. was once known for its shoemakers. In the 1800s, Maine was abuzz with workshops full of craftsmen who made some of the finest leather shoes in the world. Freeport alone had over 15 shoe factories. But as the forces of globalization shifted manufacturing overseas, they were shuttered one by one.

Cole Haan was founded in Chicago in 1928, when America was still known for its shoemaking prowess. It eventually moved production to Maine, where it could tap into local experts. This project is an effort to bring to the fore the brand's long history in this industry. "We get to bring forward all the wisdom we've collected along the way, and that wisdom comes in the form of beautiful crafted products," says Dave Maddocks, Cole Haan's CMO and general manager of business development.

At the same time, Maddocks makes it clear that this Made in Maine collection isn't part of a larger strategy of bringing all of its production to America. Given that the manufacturing process is so time- and labor-intensive, Cole Haan will only make a small batch of the shoes to cater to people who like the idea of investing in high-quality, locally made products. The company promises that these shoes, if well cared for, will last a lifetime. (The men and women's loafers cost $325 and the men's oxfords cost $400.) "This is not so much about us trying to make a big statement as it is about us wanting to serve our customers," he says.

Over the last few years, the brand has been focusing heavily on innovation. Last year, it opened a Global Innovation Center, packed with high-tech testing and 3D modeling machines. It has recruited a team with expertise in industrial design, biomechanics, material science, and engineering, to find ways to push the boundaries of shoemaking. This month, it launched the GrandRevolution line, introducing into men's oxfords and women's pumps technologies ordinarily found in sneakers: cushioning, flexibility, lightness, and breathability. (We describe the process of creating them in our current magazine issue.)

But in the midst of all of this fast-paced technology, Cole Haan is working to preserve its expertise in slow, deliberate craftsmanship. The company has several shoemaking veterans on staff with an average of 30 years of experience each. The Made in Maine initiative brings more experts to the brand. "We did this (initiative) to say that these time-honored techniques and knowledge are safe and sound at Cole Haan," Maddocks says.

Maddocks describes the interesting interactions that happen when the traditional and futuristic approaches to shoemaking come together. Industrial designers, for instance, are trained to think about things like fusing together different materials, while third generation leather tanning experts can talk for hours about how to select the right hide and burnish the leather. "When you pair those two people in a room, it's really fun to watch," he says. "You're sure to get some new combination of ideas."

Strategic planning to get people out of the office can be a great way to bust silos and strengthen company culture.

While some workers may be dreading trust falls and sitting around the fire singing "Kumbaya" while packing their bags, corporate retreats have been identified as a critical element to developing bonds, breaking through stuck team dynamics, and hitting the refresh button.

"I'm seeing more groups tap the wisdom of their teams by creating open space and unstructured time for group work," Leigh Marz, an organizational consultant and coach who has advised and facilitated retreats for NASA and University of California at Berkeley tells Fast Company. "I think this trend is a positive one that illustrates a trust in the abilities of the team and promotes shared leadership."

Do You Need A Retreat? Or Just An Offsite?

Marz says there are five indicators that signal when it may be time for an organization to plan a retreat.

1. When departments are functioning in silos and communication is breaking down.
2. When you are bringing on new people and you want to incorporate them into the company's culture.
3. After a challenging time, such as cutbacks or a downturn in the market.
4. During a merger that plans to combine two companies' cultures.
5. Annually for maintenance, but have a clear purpose and objectives about what you want to get out of it.

Next, Marz advises finding the right setting for the culture of your organization, whether it's a remote wilderness experience filled with outdoor activities or another setting to host team and leadership-building exercises to enjoy and remember.

When preparing, Marz cautions leaders to make the distinction between a retreat and an offsite meeting. She recommends asking the following questions to determine whether you are planning a true retreat versus an offsite work or strategy session:

• Is there downtime for reflection?
• Is there time for staff to connect with each other and network?
• Is it in a setting that helps to inspire and replenish?

Deciding Where To Go

Biba Binotti, founder of U.K.-based leadership development consultancy Red Hat People, believes that getting people out of the office and on to a farm is a crucial element of staff development. "We do that because it busts all of the myths around leadership and corporate professionals," she says. "Getting them out of their usual office clothes, their corporate 'uniform,' breaks down their preconception of who they are and who people expect them to be," Binotti says. "It's a great leveler, and it stops the heightened competitiveness and posturing."

Binotti partners with another organization, Acorn to Oaks, to do Equine Guided Leadership training. "The horses will reflect your congruence," she says. In other words, the horse will respond positively when what you feel inside matches your outward expression. "The great thing is that, unlike humans, they are nonjudgmental and don't hold any grudges, they respond in the moment so you can also change your behavior and get instant feedback. Plus, just being with horses reduces stress and is calming."
 
One woman who came had a horse of her own, Binotti recalls, but when she got into the arena she couldn't get the horse to do what she wanted. "One of the things that came out for her is that she thought she had to be perfect and the best, and yet inside, she felt she wasn't," Binotti says. "Her team was relieved to hear her say this," she remembers. They were then able to tell her they felt she was also trying to be the expert and perfect in the workplace, and so they couldn't really connect with her. Says Binotti: "This totally transformed her relationship with herself and her team.' 

Plan Ahead, But Prepare For Surprises

Cocreating the agenda for the retreat can increase investment and participation, says Marz. "Examples of concrete objectives are to accomplish some piece of work together and to have something to show for it at the end," she says. "Be sure to include intangible goals as well, such as feeling replenished, inspired, and connected to one another," Marz adds.

"A great way to solicit people's input for retreat planning is to ask them what they don't want in a retreat," says Marz. "Ask them what would be a disaster. This helps surface some people's concerns, usually in a playful way, that will tell you a lot about where people are coming from."

That doesn't mean retreats shouldn't push people past their comfort zones. When the CEO of a tech company told Jenny Sauer-Klein, founder of Play On Purpose, to design a summer camp theme for their corporate retreat, he mentioned he didn't want any activities that involved too much intimacy or vulnerability.

"A lot of people have ideas of what team building is going to be. They think it is going to be cheesy, hokey and forced," says Sauer-Klein. "The art is creating conditions where play and fun arise naturally from the game itself." After a few of these exercises, she says, the level of risk taking, teamwork, communication, and trust increase exponentially.

On the third and final day of this particular retreat, after two days of play, Sauer-Klein had the group ready to do "car and driver," an initiative that blindfolds half of the participants.

"This kinesthetic exercise is a gold mine of information about how to build trust, teamwork, and leadership," Sauer-Klein explains. "People are afraid of momentary discomfort, which makes them want to avoid whole realms of experience," she says, "and they can miss out on building deep trust and connections."

Related:Here's What It Takes To Get The Most Out Of Corporate Retreats

Twitter's live events aim to recruit new users. So I asked my favorite football-loving, Twitter non-users to review its first NFL broadcast.

Last night, Twitter streamed the first of 10 Thursday-night football games that it has bought the rights to air this season. Hosting NFL games is part of a wider strategy to woo new users to the social network: The game, like other live events on Twitter, was broadcast next to a running stream of tweets that a new user could consume without necessarily understanding the nuances of hashtags, @ mentions, and other of Twitter's less-than-intuitive conventions.

The idea is to showcase Twitter as a complement to news rather than as a social network, and to show people who aren't interested in, say, sharing baby pictures, why they should use the product. Twitter reportedly paid between $10 million and $15 million for rights to stream the games.

To understand whether Twitter accomplished its goal of approachability for people who don't typically use the platform, I turned to the lifelong football fans I know best: My parents, who taught me that calling people during Sunday games is as rude as calling on Christmas.

"Would I watch it on my laptop?" My dad asks me when I request that he watch the game on Twitter.

Twitter has made its version of the game available on its mobile app, its desktop product, and in its apps for the Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Xbox. My dad opts for the laptop. My mom watches on her iPad. Neither has any trouble navigating to the game from the link I send them (Twitter doesn't require viewers sign up or sign in to watch). Though my parents were watching in the same room, I interviewed them individually via text message.

"It's kind of hard to go back and forth from [the stream] to the tweets," my dad says as soon as he pulls up the game. "It might be fun to have video on TV and watch the tweets on a PC."

This, I tell him, is what many people do with Twitter while watching all sorts of events, even if they're not streamed live on Twitter. Has he thought about tweeting?

"There are so many tweets," He says. "You might as well put a note in a bottle and throw it into Lake Michigan." (We're Midwesterners).

My mom is a little more open to the idea. "[It's] a little pixilated at times," she says, "overall a good option if you don't want to pay for NFL Network [the league's 24-hour network]."

Do the tweets add anything?

"It's like yelling at the TV," she says. "If you're alone without someone to share your excitement and frustration with, it could compensate."

I tell her that dad doesn't think these tweets are adding anything: "He doesn't yell at the TV," she says.

My father concedes that "It would be nice if you were traveling and local TV wasn't carrying a game you wanted to see. A lot of the tweets mention they like this."

"I don't even know how a hashtag works," my mom says.

This is a problem for Twitter—and one this live setup to some extent solves. Viewers can consume the conversation around an event without necessarily knowing how it's organized. I tell her hashtags work like a filing system. "And then, why do I care what random strangers tweet?" she asks.

It's interesting commentary, maybe?

"The tweets are moronic," my father concludes.

"He thinks the tweets are moronic," I tell my mom.

"He doesn't do fantasy football either," she says. "He liked the tweets during the debates."

Oh reaaalllllly? I had no idea that my dad watched the presidential primary debates with Twitter open (the site also live-streamed the Republican and Democratic debates on its platform). Or that my dad ever opened Twitter.

"The tweets here are shallow and not thought-provoking," he tells me when I tell him what I've learned from mom. "In the debates, it was more interesting."

Coming from a non-nerd who—like most non-nerds—doesn't get hashtags and doesn't see the point in tweeting, even if Twitter football doesn't turn out to be my dad's thing, I'd chalk this up as a success for Twitter's live events strategy.

These products didn't connect, but they paved the way for tech we now take for granted.

1. Apple Lisa, 1983

The first personal computer with a windows-and-icons-style graphical user interface, Steve Jobs's visionary Lisa had one disastrous flaw: a staggering $10,000 retail price.

Redeeming factor: Many Lisa features resurfaced with the more affordable and successful Macintosh.

2. IBM PCjr, 1984

Quickly discontinued due to pokey performance, the first offspring of the IBM PC had an infamous, almost unusable keyboard and was incompatible with some software written for the original PC.

Redeeming factor: The wireless keyboard connection was years ahead of its time.

3. AT&T Videophone 2500, 1992

This little dingus used standard landlines to transmit jittery images of your loved ones at a painfully slow 10 frames per second. The cost? A cool $1,500.

Redeeming factor: Today, video chat is commonplace (and free!) with Skype, Facetime, and other now-familiar apps.

4. Nintendo Virtual Boy, 1995

The portable 3-D game console displayed only two colors (red and black) and required users to lean into a stereoscopic display supported by short stilts. Dizziness and nausea soon followed.

Redeeming factor: Nintendo had the right idea. Twenty years later, virtual reality would make a big comeback with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

5. WebTV, 1996

A box that brought the Internet to your TV. But viewing low-res web pages on a cathode-ray TV using a dial-up modem and a clunky remote was less appealing than a Nash Bridges rerun.

Redeeming factor: It helped convince tech companies that TV on the web was smarter than the web on TV.

6. Microsoft SPOT watch, 2004

Eleven years before Apple Watch, it could display messages, stock prices, and weather reports on your wrist. But its bulky housing, tiny screen, and short battery life drove SPOT to the pound.

Redeeming factor: The concept was solid, and all of SPOT's features are now standard on smartwatches.

7. Sony HDD Walkman, 2004

The digital-music player required users to convert MP3s to Sony's native ATRAC format using the cumbersome Connect online store.

Redeeming factor: Its failure helped persuade Sony to ditch its proprietary media format, helping rid the world of user-unfriendly digital-rights-management schemes.

8. Motorola Rokr E1 Apple iTunes phone, 2005

Finally, a much-awaited pairing of an iPod with a cell phone. But this Motorola–Apple collaboration had a stingy 100-song limit and no way to download tunes wirelessly, making it more frustrating than futuristic.

Redeeming factor: It pointed the way toward the iPhone.

9. HP TouchPad, 2011

HP's first tablet ran WebOS, the operating system behind the much-loved Palm Pilot PDA. That's all it had going for it. Buggy, slow, and lacking apps, it was dead in less than three months.

Redeeming factor: Its visual metaphor of displaying info and apps as "cards" is today used by Google Now's and Apple's operating systems.

10. Google Nexus Q, 2012

The big flaw with this media-streaming device: It could only access content from the Google Play Store or YouTube. It also cost way more than earlier-to-market players Roku and Apple TV.

Redeeming factor: It served as a precursor to Google's Chromecast, a far cheaper and more versatile streaming gadget that remains popular.

The brain's creative circuitry holds some unexpected secrets that scientists are only just beginning to understand.

Daydreaming. Horsing around. Aimless wandering. A sudden, traumatic loss. So many things that seem to conjure an automatic, negative connotation can actually have an interesting—indeed, often positive—impact on our creativity. In fact, the further you dig into the inner workings of the creative side of our minds, the more surprises you're likely to uncover.

Paging through Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, the pattern is hard to miss. While much about the mechanics of human creativity is obvious—meditation, for instance, has long been known to boost a number of cognitive functions—much of it is downright counterintuitive.

The book offers a broad, digestible survey of the latest science about creative thinking, often tying it to historical examples and famous names. In the process, it paints a picture that is not just informative, but useful.

1. 72% Of People Have Creative Insights In The Shower

It's not just a cliche: Standing naked beneath a stream of hot water and letting your mind wander is good for your creativity. In a chapter that explores the links between creativity and various solitary activities (spoiler alert: Both daydreaming and taking a walk are encouraged), Gregoire and Kaufman confirm a hunch many of us have had. Something about the absolute isolation of our morning shower makes an excellent incubator for ideas. Woody Allen is just one famous person who touts the creative benefits of a long, hot shower, but he's far from alone. In a 2014 study conducted by Kaufman, 72% of respondents around the world reported having some kind of new insight in the shower.

2. The Introverts Are Onto Something: Solitude Is Where Creativity Thrives

As productive as we can be in groups, there's nothing quite like working—and thinking—alone. As it turns out, the more creative, imaginative networks of the brain simply work better when we're alone. That's when we are able to engage in what neuroscientists call "constructive internal reflection," a mental state crucial to idea generation and creativity. When the outside world is tuned out, our brains are better at making certain connections, crystallizing memories, and processing information.

3. Trying New Things Makes You More Creative

It stands to reason that a willingness to explore and try new things would be correlated with creativity. The Beatles' music famously changed when they started toying with experimental tape loops and new instruments like the sitar and the Mellotron, for instance. Beat writers like Jack Kerouac chronicled real world adventures while playing fast and loose with literary conventions.

As it turns out, there's a major neuroscientific basis for the link between openness to new experience and creative thinking. Exploration is tied to the neurotransmitter dopamine, which also plays a role in motivation and learning (among other things) and "facilitates psychological plasticity, a tendency to explore and engage flexibly with new things," the authors write. In fact, a pile of scientific research reviewed by Kaufman and Gregoire suggests that, in their words, "the drive for exploration, in its many forms, may be the single most important personal factor predicting creative achievement."

4. Trust Your Intuition, That's How LSD Was Discovered

The story of how chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, and then famously embarked on the world's first acid trip, is well-known among those interested in medicine and psychedelic culture. But what's less widely known is one detail: Hoffmann had synthesized LSD-25 (one of several chemical combinations he had created) a full five years before he decided to go back and synthesize it again and continue to experiment with it. Why? He just had a hunch.

This type of intuition—the form of less-than-conscious thinking revered by Steve Jobs (also a fan of LSD, incidentally) as "more powerful than intellect"—led to the discovery of a drug that would go on to have an enormous impact on music and popular culture. It even piqued the interest of the CIA, who conducted massive experiments into its mind-altering capabilities.

The unconscious mind may be a much bigger deal than we ever realized. Intuition and the sudden flashes of insight that sometimes spring from it are of great—and still little understood—interest to neuroscientists and psychologists. According to the authors, 1992 research published in American Psychology suggests that "nonconscious processes may indeed be faster and structurally more sophisticated than our conscious thinking systems."

5. Trauma Has Hidden Creative Properties

Frida Kahlo. John Lennon. Paul McCartney. Truman Capote. Robin Williams. Jerry Garcia. Some of the most revered creative minds in modern history have one thing in common: They experienced some kind of major loss or trauma (quite often, the death of a parent or another loved one) that had an impact on their artistic endeavors. It's no coincidence, either. Psychologists call this phenomenon "post-traumatic growth." In the face of a major loss, our brains often explore new creative outlets as part of the "rebuilding" process of our lives, especially as our perspectives, priorities, and ways of thinking about things shift around. Post-traumatic growth has been explored in hundreds of scientific studies, including a 2004 study in the Journal of Traumatic Stress showing that 70% of survivors experienced some kind of positive psychological change after a traumatic experience.

6. Daydreaming Is Surprisingly Good For Your Brain

You wouldn't want to drift too far into your mental happy place during an important budget meeting, but the act of daydreaming can have unexpectedly positive benefits for your creativity. While fantasizing about a bouncy castle filled with corgi puppies or mentally reliving your summer vacation at your desk might not feel very productive, there's actually more going on inside that skull of yours when your thoughts wander toward the seemingly mindless.

According to the science on daydreaming, these moments provide a sort of mental incubation period that can enhance creative thinking, long-term planning, and self awareness. Psychologists have been studying the concept of "positive-constructive daydreaming" for decades and uncovering the various ways in which, as the authors put it, "the mind's wandering is vital to imagination and creative thought."

7. Some Of The Best Ideas Are Widely Ridiculed Before They're Revered

History is filled with examples of discoveries and ideas that were initially rejected before being accepted as the norm. For example, Galileo was famously condemned for sharing astronomical discoveries that conflicted with Catholic theology at the time. Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis was committed to an insane asylum after losing his job for suggesting, in the 19th century, the radical notion that infections could be spread by germs on doctors' hands in hospitals. In 1600, philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for the heresy of proposing that the universe might be infinite.

As it turns out, this resistance to new, unconventional ideas has psychological underpinnings, and indeed, continues well into modern times. In 2009, one paper published in Scientometrics examined examples of Nobel Prize-winning ideas and discoveries that were initially resisted by the scientific community, demonstrating a systemic pattern of skepticism directed at paradigm-challenging theories.

This trend is no coincidence. Psychologists at Cornell University conducted a study that showed that we have an implicit bias against less conventional, practical-seeming ideas. This tendency apparently runs deep as studies going back to the 1950s have shown people to be prone to conforming to popular opinions and perspectives. Research suggests that whatever nonconformist tendencies we may have as children are often driven out of us by the rote learning and direct instruction utilized in schools, which may counteract our more exploratory and creative modes of thinking and learning. "In fact," Kaufman and Gregoire write, "teachers have been found to display a clear preference for students who show less creativity."

Former WeWork executives want to help landlords and corporations build modern office spaces themselves.

WeWork, a company that offers shared, flexibile-lease offices in 113 locations in 33 countries, has achieved a position in the "coworking" world similar to that of Starbucks in the coffee world. While plenty of smaller companies offer coworking in a myriad of flavors—focusing, for instance, on designers or startups—they're not a significant threat to WeWork's business. No Dunkin' Donuts has emerged. A bigger potential problem for WeWork as it strives to live up to its $16 billion valuation would be if the landlords and companies it works with build their own hip office spaces.

A new outlet created by two of WeWork's former employees aims to help landlords and corporations do just that.

WeWork's basic business model is simple: The company rents large chunks of office space, breaks up that space into tiny offices and communal work spaces, sprinkles in good design and community features, and then subleases it to tenants at a huge mark-up. Landlords could make more money if they skipped the lease with WeWork and directly subleased to tenants, but typically, they don't want to deal with all of the hassle involved in running a coworking space. "At the end of the day, it's enormously human-labor intensive and operationally intensive," says Bryan Woo, the director of acquisitions at real estate developer Young Woo. "[It's like saying to a landlord], 'Why don't you operate the hotel?'"

The former WeWork employees' new company, which does not yet have a name, removes some of this hassle by offering what Mark Kennedy, a partner on the project who has a background in private equity and real estate, has called "coworking in a box."

"[Landlords] don't want to go to PivotDesk or WeWork and give them a lease," Kennedy says, referring to the long-term contracts landlords offer those companies, who then sublease them on a flexible basis. "But they don't just want to turn the key on their own coworking space and say, 'I hope this works.' So that opens the door for us."

Kennedy and his two cofounders (both of whom, Kennedy says, asked not to be named because of their relationship with WeWork) will work as project managers to coordinate the construction, design, and engineering of coworking spaces. They have also partnered with service providers, such as cleaning and security companies, that will help operate the spaces. Landlords will have the option of managing the premises themselves, asking the startup to operate it under a profit-sharing agreement, or partnering with a third-party operator (which could, Kennedy says, be another coworking brand).

The new, yet-to-be-named company has also partnered with corporations who want to incorporate some version of "coworking" into their own offices rather than rent space in a company like WeWork. One, a large pharmaceutical company, is building a 40,000-square-foot office building in which workers have no assigned seating. They come in every day and sit where they want, and the company plans to open up the extra desks to outside entrepreneurs.

Though WeWork has built its business on offering flexible office space to small startups and freelancers, recently it has been courting bigger corporate clients. About 10% of Fortune 500 companies, according to WeWork, lease space in one of its locations (most rent a relatively small number of desks), and it offers discounts to companies based on volume and length of lease. WeWork recently posted a job for a head of enterprise sales.

WeWork's hip energy and collaborative environment are key selling points in its pitch to potential subleasers. But with or without WeWork's ex-employees' new venture (which hasn't publicly launched yet), some corporations have tried to create a similar vibe on their own. Since 2011, the consulting firm PwC, for instance, has redesigned 35 of its U.S. offices to be more like coworking spaces, with flexible work areas and fewer square feet dedicated to each individual employee. "Our strategy is how to create WeWork within PwC," says Toni Cusumano, a principal in the company's global human capital practice.

WeWork, too, has considered the business of bringing WeWork's space and operations expertise into corporations' offices rather than bringing large companies into WeWork.

Earlier this year, WeWork COO Artie Minson told me that WeWork could help companies "rethink corporate headquarters" and how to operate buildings and communities digitally. He called this "an interesting direction and opportunity the business could take." WeWork CEO Adam Neumann described how he would put WeWork's operating capabilities into another building. "It sounds simple: How you manage an event book, register a conference room, manage ordering of milk and coffee?" he said. "But there's nothing simple about it. Most companies doing it today are wasting money and wasting space. By using our app and powering it with an app you'll be able to save money and space, but more importantly, create an energy."

Another company, Managed By Q, sells a similar idea, minus the "energy." It installs an iPad in each of its client's offices through which they can coordinate services such as cleaning, handyman work, and catering.

Kennedy is confident that he's got the energy covered, too. He says that landlords who hire the new firm can say, "We're going to keep our real estate, and we'll hire people from the outside to create this energy."

Research suggests that a majority curse at work, but it still makes many uncomfortable.

Do you not give a sh*t when your coworkers swear? Or does it drive you f*cking crazy?

A of 1,542 American workers by Wrike, a project management software company, found that 57% of respondents admit to swearing in the workplace. Of those who do, 93% have colleagues that also openly swear in the workplace, compared to 63% of those who censor themselves.

The study also found that 66% of millennials (aged 18-29) openly swear at work, compared to only 54% of their baby boomer and gen X colleagues (aged 30 and over). Women are also more likely to report dropping f-bombs at the office, with 60% admitting to swearing at work, compared with 55% of men. Men who do use profanity around the office, however, tend to do so at a higher frequency than their female colleagues.

The swearers of the workplace at least know to censor themselves in certain crowds, according to the study. Of those who are comfortable with swearing: 80% do so in front of peers, while only 55% will swear in front of a manager, and just 30% will swear in front of an executive. (The study does not mention of how often superiors are cursed behind their backs.) Only 2% of respondents admit to swearing frequently in front of clients, with 28% saving it for special occasions and 62% avoiding harsh language in front of clients entirely.

If you have sensitive ears you may want to avoid accepting a position in the health care industry, where 64% of employees admit to swearing in the workplace, with 45% doing so on a regular or daily basis. The next rudest workplace, according to the Wrike study, is finance, where 62% swear in the office, followed by 61% of professional services employees, 59% of tech workers, 53% of government staff, and 48% of those who work in education.

While it may make some uncomfortable, research conducted by the University of East Anglia in Norwich suggests that swearing at work reduces stress and boosts team spirit.

Swearing isn't also necessarily a sign of poor vocabulary or intelligence. In fact, research suggests the very opposite. According to a study published earlier this year by Language Sciences, the use of taboo language is positively correlated with overall verbal fluency.

"It's part of your emotional intelligence to know how and when to use these words. If you're thinking about it from a moral perspective, you're missing how common and normal it is. Everybody knows this language," says Dr. Timothy Jay of the Department of Psychology at Massachusetts College Of Liberal Arts and author of the study, told Medical Daily.

But be careful who you swear around. The Wrike study revealed that of the 43% of those who do not use profane language in the workplace, 36% are bothered when others drop the F-bomb, and 20% would consider filling an official complaint in regards to their colleagues' language. On the other hand, 33% of respondents would not consider a position at a workplace that strictly banned swearing, so you can't f*cking win either way.

Watching the first NFL game live-streamed on Twitter on my Galaxy 6 felt like being in the sports bar of the future.

I've been a football fan for as long as I can remember. But my first memory of the game is set on the other side of the world, in New Delhi, India, where I grew up. It involves me, bleary-eyed and wearing a wedge of Swiss cheese-shaped foam on my head, huddled next to my dad on the couch.

We woke up at sunrise to watch Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers.

The big guy wasn't some fair-weather fan. He grew up in Milwaukee, about a two-hour drive south of Titletown, U.S.A. And since he was a Packers fan, cheering them on as the greatest team in the world, who was I to argue? (Steelers fan will point to their six Super Bowl trophies and claim Titletown is in Pittsburgh, but don't be fooled: The Packers not only won the first Super Bowl, and the next, but also have racked up 13 league championships.)

Over the years, we've watched so many NFL games together (and sometimes via text)—too many to count. On that salmon-colored couch (or was it blue?) in India, in the basement of our next home outside Washington, D.C., and even shivering with our butts on the metal bleachers that circle the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field.

We celebrated the Packers' Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots together in 1997 (Desmond Howard is fast and Reggie White is the G.O.A.T) and, eventually, picked ourselves up after that heart-rending loss the next year to John Elway's Broncos. In February of 2011, Dad capped off Green Bay's 31-25 win over the Steelers by popping the cap off a decade-old beer he'd been saving for a special occasion—a championship counts. (I don't live with many regrets, but not taking a sip of that grog is one of them.)

So, you can imagine my excitement when, way back in April, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that 10 of the League's 16 Thursday Night Football games this season would be streamed live on Twitter. Two of my favorite things, football and hot takes, in the same place!

While the rollout wasn't perfect (more on that below), it was clear last night during the clash between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets that the social network turned news platform was ready for kickoff.

There was import in the final score, as both teams took the field with 0-1 records—and only 12% of 0-2 teams make the playoffs. But there was media significance to the gridiron battle, too, as News10NBC's Chris Horvatits pointed out: a Bills versus Jets game in 1998 was the first NFL game broadcast in high definition; now the same matchup was the focus of a sprint into a live-streamed future.

Twitter's broadcast had everything a sports fan like me could ask for. First and foremost: a clear HD picture with limited buffering.

The video stream actually seemed better than your average HD stream (it wasn't, having compared it to the same stream on my NFL Mobile app, but still: shiny new internet things are exciting!). Buffering was infrequent and not at all disruptive.

Of course, the online stream wasn't truly live, but on a slight delay from the TV feed on CBS and NFL Network, but that's to be expected. ESPN's CTO told Fast Company's Harry McCracken that it's basically impossible to stream live events as quickly as broadcast TV, but they are working on it.

Tuning in was easy, as a long-time Twitter user: "WATCH LIVE" was marked in red in the NFL tab hovering in my Moments menu (which I rarely use). A feed of curated tweets appeared under the video stream and any 140-character contributions were wisely auto-populated by the official #TNF hashtag (with accompanying helmet emoji). Player status updates, quick commentary, and fan-driven rah-rahs were all there. The stream even shared tweets about Tyrod Taylor, Buffalo's starting quarterback, being knocked unconscious—and being allowed back into the game—after being sandwiched by several Jets defenders. Didn't expect that.

With a tap of my screen, I was able to expand the video stream to full size or minimize without interrupting the broadcast. Also cool: rotating my (non-explosive) Android device from my standard portrait-style tweeting position to landscape expanded the video to fullscreen automatically. That's nice, because, let's be honest, the video stream sitting atop a waterfall of tweets was a little small for my taste. And I watch a decent amount of sports on my mobile device: NFL games in seasons past, Premier League matches almost every weekend, and NBA action (the Wizards, mostly, I'm embarrassed to admit).

To be clear, even in portrait mode, the video stream is not prohibitively small. Like, you can still see everything you want to just fine—from whatever is being displayed in the chyron to the expression on a coach's face. (It helps that, when streaming, I hold my smartphone a few inches from my face, as you surely do, too.)

While the tech and the football action were better than I had expected (most Thursday-night games last season were snoozers), I was frustrated by a few things. I had big plans to watch the game on Apple TV, but the NFL on Twitter experience was only available to fans with the latest hardware, which my girlfriend's apartment was not equipped with. Workaround: I watched most of the game on Twitter dot com. But beef: Clicking on a tweet froze the video stream (not the case when replying to tweets), which didn't resume playing unless I clicked the little play button in the lower left-hand corner. That was annoying—as if Twitter users can't tweet and chew gum and make dinner and watch TV at the same time. More annoying: I wasn't able to check my mentions without leaving the #TNF page altogether, which meant I found myself missing the action on a handful of occasions while reloading the broadcast.

Overall, however, the experience was great. Plus, the curated tweet stream, with this one exception, was free from inappropriate language, harassment, and NSFW images. Even when the eggs—infamous for racist, sexist, Islamophobic, and homophobic tweets—started showing up midway through the third quarter.

The eggs weren't deplorable at all. In fact, they were on point.

Blue egg @puzzlernj192 tweeted: #TNF thank you twitter thank you NFL what a game and watching this overseas at 11am."

I followed up with a few of them. For example, I asked orange egg @Biddy_32 (born Art Bidlack) if he signed up for Twitter just to watch the game. "I did lol," was the quick response. This was followed a minute later by "I think I'm hooked bro." Bidlack, a Hulu and Netflix subscriber, doesn't have cable, so Twitter was the only way for him to watch the game at home.

Purple egg @JacobBrizuela1, whose first-ever tweet was about the football game, told me he signed up for Twitter to complement his recently launched YouTube channel. "I'm just a young guy who loves and knows a lot about football," he explained in my mentions. By the end of the game, Brizuela, who hopes to be an NFL reporter someday, had tweeted more than 50 times.

Looking forward, I hope that Twitter will improve the stream of football-related tweets. While I read many of them, and engaged with a handful of common-interest strangers, I found myself missing my own timeline—and ended up running TweetDeck in the background. There are only 11 minutes of athletic competition during an NFL game, and during stops in play, I wanted to read takes from the voices I trust, as well as learn about octopus arms in operating rooms, see the best Twitter memes (which are different than the ones seen on Instagram), and catch up on all the crazy stuff Trump said earlier in the day.

At the end of the day, as pro athletes love to say, Twitter scored a lot of points during last night's 37-31 shootout (the Jets won). The broadcast did a lot to answer the question so many Americans still ask: What the heck is the point of this Twitter thing? Everyone who visited tnf dot twitter dot com was watching, and talking about, the very same thing in the same digital space. Some focused on the huge hits or long touchdowns, while others commented about wide receiver Eric Decker's handsome mug.

The NFL wins, because Twitter will attract more eyeballs to its on-field product. But Twitter should move up in the popular standings, too. The internet is where people are, not just something that people do, and live-streaming events will help make Twitter a go-to destination. It won people over. And consider this: Earlier this year, the New York Timesreported that the average Twitter user spends just one minute a day on the platform.

This NFL rollout wasn't for me—I'm on Twitter almost all day every day, and I'm buying the idea of watching a live event on my favorite app (even if it'll cost me a few dollars in the future). The broadcast, which fits with Twitter's big bet on video (the platform's fastest growing media type) was an attempt to connect with potential users. And the try was good—right down the middle.

"Twitter broadcast was awesome, very few glitches at all. And no I don't have cable. #BrokeCollegeStudentLife," @BamBam_OSA told me (he's another egg who signed up for the service to watch the game).

"Waiting on next Thursday!"

New research draws attention to the role music plays in workplace productivity.

If you want your employees to work well together and get more done as a team, it might help to pipe in some upbeat tunes. Research from Cornell University has found that employees who listen to happy music—like the Beatles's "Yellow Submarine"—are able to cooperate and make group decisions better than employees who work without a background soundtrack.

"Retailers certainly use music routinely with the intention of influencing consumer behavior," says Kevin Kniffen, an applied behavioral scientist at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and lead author of the study. "The point of our new research is to draw attention to the role that music can have for employees, whether in retail workplaces or any other kind."

Researchers played "Yellow Submarine"; "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves; "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison; and the theme song from "Happy Days" on a loop in a workplace environment, says Kniffen. "A definitional feature of happy music is that it has a rhythm to it," he says. "Happy music significantly and positively influences cooperative behavior," Kniffen points out. "We also find a significant positive association between mood and cooperative behavior."

Other types of music had more surprising results: "We played 'screamo' music ("Smokahontas" by Attack Attack! and "You Ain't No Family" by Iwrestledabearonce) for one-third of the participants in our second study, and there was no difference between that kind of heavy metal-type music and the third who participated in the decision-making study with no music playing in the background," says Kniffen. "Our research points clearly to the value of happy or rhythmic music."

Creating A Workplace Playlist

Nicole Stillings, aka DJ Rose, is a New York City-based music director who creates playlists for companies such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Ralph Lauren that help with branding. She also chooses music that helps companies achieve certain goals, like focus and productivity.

"More brands are starting to understand that music is more than a way to market to customers," she says. "Over time, more of my clients are shifting their music from stores to corporate."

If you're going to play music in your workplace, the most important thing you need to do is match the music to the task, says Stillings. "If you're trying to do something that requires focus, like writing, you're using the language part of the brain," she says. "You can create overload if you try to listen to music that has heavy vocals. It's better to listen to something downtempo, like elevator or classical music."

She suggests this playlist (also uploaded to Spotify):

• "Intro" by The XX
• "Fleur Blanche" by Orsten
• "My Deep & Magical Ambient- Guitar Version" by Stigmato Inc
• "A Gentle Dissolve" by Thievery Corportation
• "True" by Spandau Ballet (Lane 8 Edit)
• "The Cello Song" by The Piano Guys
• "Peponi (Paradise)" The Piano Guys, Alex Boyé
• "You & Me" by Dr.Unkenbeat (Jacques Gusto Remix)
• "La Isla Bonita" by Budda Bar Sonora
• "Sensify Me" by Zimmer (Crayon Remix)
• "Hey Now" by London Grammar (PIU Beach Edit)

When it comes to tackling mundane tasks like checking emails, Stillings suggests listening to something upbeat and positive. "Music can make a task more interesting, and increase your productivity by helping you get through it quicker."

She offers this playlist to boost productivity (also uploaded to Spotify):

• "Raging" by Kygo
• "Capsize" by Friendship, Emily Warren
• "Final Song" by MØ
• "Fast Car" by Jonas Blue. Dakota
• "This Girl" by Kungs, Cookin' on 3 Burners
• "Your Type" by Carly Rae Jepsen (Young Bombs Remix)
• "I Love You Always Forever" by Betty Who (Viceroy Remix)
• "Boss" by Disclosure
• "Gold" by Kiiara (Achtabahn Remix)
• "Groove Is in the Heart" by Dinks (Rework)
• "Feel Good" by Satin Jackets, Scavenger Hunt (Keljet Remix)
• "Let Me Hold You (Turn Me On)" by Cheat Codes, Dante Klein

"The right playlist can help you focus specifically on the task at hand by allowing your brain to follow along with the rhythms being played," says Michael Tyrrell, founder of Wholetones, a website that offers playlists designed to relieve stress and boost productivity. "This decreases the amount of random distracting thoughts that would typically derail you during the course of the workday and allows you to deeply focus," he says.

Music In Action

Music helps keep the employees of PromotionCode.org, an online source of discount codes, focused. "Depending on the time of year, we have between three and several dozen employees verifying the accuracy of the hundreds of thousands of coupons we have on the site; a tedious but necessary task," says Mike Catania, chief technology officer. "For us, the presence of music is more a catalyst to getting the brain into 'the zone' for repeated tasks," he explains. "Familiar music, regardless of the style, directly affects the quality of tasks like these for the better." In fact, the company saw a 24% decrease in input errors three months after adding music to the workplace, says Catania.

Employees at Nextiva, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based cloud-based communications provider with 400 employees, uses music throughout the office for motivation. The company's phone service has a noise-canceling feature so customers can't hear background noise.

"We play music at all times, mostly Top 40 hits to keep the energy high," says Yaniv Masjedi, vice president of marketing. "We are so into music that we play a 10-second clip of a special song selected by a sales rep every time they make a big sale," he enthuses. "The feedback has been positive among the team and it keeps everyone in a good mood."

The luxury New York City retailer has spiffed up its Fifth Avenue women's flagship, now optimized for social media sharing.

To visit the remodeled ground floor of the Fifth Avenue department store Bergdorf Goodman is to float on a pearly cloud of luxury dreams. An ordered landscape of designer handbags rises up from the gray marble floors, backlit and aglow. Restored chandeliers, princess-worthy and heavy as diamonds, dangle from the ceiling. Gentle waves of women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Before long you are gone for this world, lost in the embrace of cashmere and suede.

With the gleaming redesign of the street-level main floor of its women's store, which opened last Tuesday in time for New York Fashion Week, Bergdorf has spared no expense to offer its customers a dose of fashion fantasy. The question is whether that approach will translate into sales. (The retailer, which is owned by the Neiman Marcus Group, declined to disclose how much the renovation cost.)

"We are only one store in the world," says Linda Fargo, senior vice president for women's fashion and store presentation, as we walk with Bergdorf president Joshua Schulman past Dior handbags and Chanel jewelry on a recent tour. "We want to fulfill the dream of what this should be."

It may seem counterintuitive, but New York has become a magnet for high-end retail at the very moment when department stores in malls across the country are struggling to survive. Neiman Marcus is opening a flagship on the west side of Manhattan in 2018, and Nordstrom plans to follow suit in 2019. Barneys opened a downtown store, complete with barber shop, in February. And Saks, which is undertaking a $250 million renovation its Fifth Avenue flagship, opened a women's store in the Brookfield Mall abutting the World Trade Center last month. All told, New York is poised to absorb more than 1.5 million square feet of new retail space over the next few years.

Bergdorf's overhaul of its ground floor portends the type of strategies that its competitors will likely use in order to grow sales and justify the cost of their premium real estate. Most obvious to customers are architectural features designed for social sharing.

Schulman walks toward the oversize window overlooking Central Park, between leather handbag displays. "We think this is going to become one of the great Instagram sites in New York City," he says. "We love seeing the fountain; even the hot dog truck gives you such a sense of place. There's only one Bergdorf Goodman, only in New York." (Barneys adopted a similar approach at its new Chelsea store, where an Instagram-friendly spiral staircase steals the show.)

Other design features are more subtle. For example, many of the new spaces now follow an "open sell" model. Counters have no front or back, and no glass doors, freeing sales associates to float around the room and customers to explore and inspect. "The product is much more accessible," Schulman says.

In the background, relationship management technology ties the offline customer to a digital profile that sales associates can use to view past purchases and send messages. The store's online and offline inventories, once separate, are now combined.

But in the end, Bergdorf's primary advantage may be that it has never drifted downmarket. While direct competitors like Saks have shifted toward the mainstream and American brands like Ralph Lauren have lost their cachet, Bergdorf remains a luxury brand, deeply connected to the sisterhood of its loyal ladies of leisure. Fargo in particular, with her attention to detail, knows how to make visiting the store feel like entering a palace apartment shared by all of Park Avenue.

In the new jewelry room, which opens onto 57th Street, her touch is evident in a recurring design element shaped like a cushion-cut gemstone. The windows, the walls, the counter mirrors, and even the lampshades repeat the gem pattern, in a deep-carpeted room filled with glimmering reflections of gold and silver.

"We feel we're custodians of an important place," she says. In a fast-fashion world, history has power.

R/GA reimagines the workplace, Sonos goes brick-and-mortar, and more from our Most Innovative Companies.

R/GA

One of the world's most tech-savvy offices isn't in Silicon Valley, but in New York City: It's the global headquarters of R/GA, the digital ad agency that counts Google, Nike, and Verizon among its clients. In January, nearly 1,000 employees moved into a new, 200,000-square-foot work space in Manhattan's Hudson Yards teeming with connected-design innovations. The overhead lights are tuned to natural circadian rhythms; enormous projection screens display local transit times and company announcements; and a proprietary app allows employees to book conference rooms. The idea for the connected office was borne, in part, of R/GA founder and CEO Bob Greenberg's desire to stem employee attrition (down 5% since the move) by creating a space that's exciting to come to every day. "It's all designed to help you do your best work," he says. "Collaboration [among R/GA employees] has improved massively."

Now, Greenberg is helping clients experience the same benefits. R/GA recently launched a connected-design arm aimed at exporting its workplace discoveries to other businesses. This opens up a novel revenue stream for R/GA at a time of increasing competition for traditional ad services. So far, the program has been a success, attracting five clients (new and old) and $20 million in business. In the coming months, R/GA will add further capabilities to its own office, including broadcasting equipment that will enable meetings between employees at all 17 R/GA offices. "As we go from the office's original 40 innovations to 100, all of those new features will be things that could be right for [other companies]," says Greenberg.

Milestones: R/GA has partnered with mall operator Westfield Labs to fund startups that design digital innovations for retailers.

Challenges: Competition is on the rise: Apple's Beats by Dr. Dre, a longtime client of R/GA, recently hired rival agency Anomaly to work on the same account.

Buzz: Positive

Sonos

Like many of its peers in the home-audio industry, Sonos has traditionally relied on big-box retailers to sell its high-fidelity, Wi-Fi–connected speakers in stores that are often overflowing with other electronics, people, and piped-in music. But this year, the 14-year-old company is reclaiming control of the way potential customers engage with its products. In July, it opened its first retail space, in New York City's SoHo neighborhood. In a nod to music lovers, the 4,200-square-foot store is filled with memorabilia, including cassette tapes from the personal collection of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and out-of-print music magazines. More significant, it houses seven semiprivate listening rooms, three of them designed by local artists, where visitors can try out Sonos's five speakers as they would in their own homes.

"We came to the realization that there was nowhere you could experience Sonos the way you should be able to experience it," says Sonos president Patrick Spence. "But how do you solve that problem without inviting the entire world to your house?" For two years, he and his team tested retail layouts in an L.A. warehouse before hitting on the concept of experiential rooms, complete with books, furniture, and other residential touches. The company expects the spaces to spur customer engagement with its speakers. But the experiment is already paying off in other ways: Upon seeing that people were struggling with the Sonos app setup, the company reconfigured its software, adding step-by-step instructions to help users start their Sonos experience more easily. "We learned something that we've put back in the product," says Spence. "And that will help us make our [speakers] even better."

Milestones: In August, Sonos announced that it would add support for the streaming-music service Bandcamp, which is favored by indie musicians, to its app.

Challenges: Seemingly caught unaware by the rise of voice-assistant speakers like Amazon's Echo, the company is now "exploring voice as a new control option."

Buzz: Positive

AMC Theatres

Milestones: The movie-theater company, owned by China's Dalian Wanda Group, announced in July that it will acquire Europe's Odeon & UCI Cinemas, a move that will make AMC the world's largest theater chain.

Challenges: AMC was forced to up its bid for American theater group Carmike Cinemas by 10% to $1.2 billion after Carmine's shareholders balked at the original sale price.

Buzz: Positive

Tastemade

Milestones: Best known for its bite-size, shareable recipe videos, food-media platform Tastemade is trying out new show formats. It recently launched a scripted series, travel programs, and more than 8.5 hours of other content on its Snapchat channel.

Challenges:BuzzFeed's rival platform, Tasty, is going high-tech, announcing a new tie-up with grocery-delivery company Instacart that allows viewers to order items seen in its videos on demand.

Buzz: Positive

Safaricom

Milestones: Just 18 months after the arrival of Uber in Kenya, the African telecoms giant launched Little Cab, a competing ride hailing service that allows riders to summon and pay for trips via an app and offers them free Wi-Fi while in transit.

Challenges: Executives at Safaricom are facing government scrutiny after leaked documents raised suspicions that officials bribed contractors between 2013 and 2015.

Buzz: Neutral

Goldwind Science & Technology Co.

Milestones: The Chinese turbine manufacturer has grown its international footprint after purchasing a wind farm in Texas, its largest in the U.S. Goldwind, which last year surpassed GE as the biggest producer of turbines, plans to double the number of machines on the Texas site.

Challenges: Siemens and Spain's Gamesa recently combined their turbine manufacturing operations, placing the partnership just behind Goldwind in market share.

Buzz: Neutral

Dyson

Milestones: In June, the vacuum maker released the Supersonic hair dryer, its first foray into personal care. To promote the product, Dyson's new London flagship store features an on-site hair salon.

Challenges: Reviewers have expressed skepticism about the steep $400 price tag of Dyson's hair dryer, which is more expensive than many top-of-the-line models.

Buzz: Positive

Makerbot

Milestones: After a year of litigation, a Minnesota judge dismissed a costly class-action lawsuit against the 3-D printer company over design flaws, freeing MakerBot up to focus on an expansion to schools and businesses on the West Coast and in Asia.

Challenges: Since April 2015, the company has laid off 36% of its workforce, closed its three retail locations, and moved its manufacturing overseas as consumers struggle to find everyday uses for a 3-D printer.

Buzz: Negative

The Macarthur Foundation

Milestones: The "genius grant" institution created a new 100&Change award that gives $100 million to a single organization, working in any field, that proposes a viable solu­tion to "a critical problem affecting people, places, or the planet."

Challenges: The Chicago-based organization was recently criticized by the former chief executive of the Chicago Housing Authority for not funding enough initiatives aimed at solving issues of African-American poverty in the city.

Buzz: Neutral

L'Oréal

Milestones: Looking to increase its share of India's $11 billion beauty market, L'Oréal has revised its strategy from targeting the country's elite to focusing on the mass market. It now offers its products in sample sizes at more affordable prices—Indians' preferred way of buying health and beauty items—in hopes of attracting 150 million Indian consumers by 2020.

Challenges: The French cosmetics giant is playing catch-up in India, where longtime competitors Unilever and Procter & Gamble have been selling their leading products in smaller sizes since the 1990s.

Buzz: Negative

Here's the latest research on the small tweaks you can make to fall back in love with a job that's getting the better of you.

When you first moved your things into your office, you couldn't wait to put your talents to use and impress your new colleagues with your dedication and drive.

But at some point, that passion to succeed did a slow fade. Instead of killing it on projects, you found yourself going through the motions, bored and uninspired.

You're not the only one who spends the workday feeling this way. A 2014 Gallup report determined that 51% of employees were "not engaged" at the office—in other words, they don't feel invested in their work, and they're not getting anything meaningful out of it. Another 17.5% of employees described themselves as "actively disengaged."

"It's normal to have times when work just doesn't seem fun anymore," says Beverly E. Jones, an executive consultant and author of Think Like an Entrepreneur, Act Like a CEO. "But there's a lot you can do to become more engaged."

Before you decide it's time to jump ship, hang tight—there are less drastic ways to rekindle your excitement. These seven tactics can help you discover the joy in your job and make your nine-to-five meaningful again.

1. Reboot Your Daily Duties

It sounds counterintuitive: If you're not enthusiastic about your job, why would piling more work onto your plate crank your motivation?

That's the genius behind a concept called job crafting: taking on new and different responsibilities to expand the boundaries of your job. It's a new term for something career experts have long advised. Tackling fresh challenges stretches your comfort zone and forces you to learn to grow. That kick-starts your drive and makes your work more interesting, says Kerry Hannon, career and finance expert and author of Love Your Job.

While it's great to volunteer for projects you hear about in meetings, you'll get more out of it by coming up with something that's your own and presenting it to your manager. Since it's your idea, you'll be more invested in it, says Hannon. Plus, taking initiative shows that you're thinking bold, and that can improve your professional rep and help you move higher up in the company.

To brainstorm boundary-pushing ideas, Hannon recommends reading trade websites and setting up Google alerts, which will notify you of the latest news in your industry. "Being in the know can inspire you to think of projects you might be able to nominate yourself for—or start on your own," she says.

2. Build Mood-Boosting Movement Into Your Work Schedule

Hunched over a screen or sitting in a conference room most of the day means that energizing oxygen doesn't circulate through your body. What registers to you as disinterest in and unhappiness with your work might actually be signs that your body craves activity, like a post-lunch walk.

Science backs up the benefits of a midday reboot: A 2015 study found that a 30-minute lunchtime stroll three times a week for 10 weeks boosts enthusiasm, increases relaxation, and tames on-the-job tension. Additional research shows that walking during the workday ignites creativity and the flow of ideas.

Can't get away for a half hour? Ask your manager or team members if you can schedule a walking meeting, suggests Jones. Even a 10-minute stretch session in an empty conference room can make you feel alert again.

Keep your energy cranked by resisting coffee refills (caffeine can make it hard to sleep later) and vending machine trips, as sugar typically causes blood sugar levels to spike—then plunge. Instead, fuel up with foods that contain lean protein and complex carbs. Office-friendly sources include yogurt, nuts, peanut butter packets, hummus, air-popped popcorn, and of course, fruits and veggies.

Related:Applying For A "Step Up" Job? 4 Ways To Tell If You're Really Ready

3. Max Out Your Company Benefits

It's common for workers to think about employee benefits strictly in terms of health coverage and vacation days, says Sarah Flaherty, LearnVest HR business partner, but that would be a mistake. Benefits are key pieces of your compensation, and you should make sure you are maximizing what you get out of them. "Your employment package often goes well beyond base salary," says Flaherty.

Some perks offered these days include different types of insurance, gym subsidies, cut-rate tickets for shows and travel, profit sharing, and a 401(k) match program.

"There are often little-known benefits that employees may not be familiar with, such as programs that provide confidential professional counseling services or tuition reimbursement," says Flaherty. "Another example that I've seen is an extension of health care benefits such as covering the cost of IVF or an adoption assistance program that covers the costs associated with adoption—such as agency or legal fees."

Taking advantage of these benefits can help you see your job in a different light—instead of a gig that's become a bit uninspiring and routine, your nine-to-five life actually opens up opportunities for you that help you and your family grow and stretch your boundaries, not to mention save money.

Feeling more fulfilled during your workday again may simply be a matter of investigating all the benefits you have access to. "Employees should be sure to pay attention to communications about benefits all year round—not just during benefits season. It is also helpful to leverage the benefits expert in their company if they have any questions about what is being offered," suggests Flaherty.

Related:5 Often-Overlooked Company Benefits That Can Help Boost Your Bottom Line

4. Practice Positivity

It's hard to resist listening in on a gripe session about higher-ups or swapping war stories concerning difficult clients. Gossip helps bond you to your coworkers, and it feels pretty harmless (when it's not about you, of course).

But there's a downside. Too much gossip can be negative and toxic, sapping your emotional energy and lowering morale without you realizing it. If you're already feeling blah about work, hearing about backstabbing coworkers or company infractions "makes you feel worse," says Jones. Research also shows that badmouthing can leave employees more cynical about their jobs, which further sinks your happiness and sense of fulfillment.

Though it can be hard to resist, try to keep the negativity to a minimum. You're not powerless against the office gossip machine: One recent study demonstrates that you can neutralize it by changing the subject or by preemptively making positive comments.

For example, if a coworker starts bashing another staffer, interrupt her by voicing a positive comment about him, or change the subject entirely by asking about her weekend plans.

5. Refresh Your Desk

You might boast to colleagues that you know exactly where everything is on your desk despite the fact that it's covered in piles of paper. While a little clutter can actually boost your performance by helping your brain zero in on what needs to get done, that mess can also be a motivation suck. A Princeton University study shows that excessive clutter competes for your attention, which makes you more distracted and less productive. The more visuals your brain has to sort through, the more overwhelmed and fatigued you become.

While you don't need a totally pristine desk, the fact is, reducing most of the loose papers, folders, and objects in your visual field keeps you more organized and focused, which helps you do better at your job and feel more in control. "When you get rid of old papers or emails that are hanging around, it's very liberating," notes Jones. Clearing clutter from your workspace also clears it from your brain, and that can clarify your goals and motivate you to dive back into your work and accomplish more.

Related:4 Ways To Turn A Job-Hopper History Into A Big Career Asset

6. Tackle Tough Office Relationships

Sometimes it's not the job itself that's the problem but the people you spend your workday with: the complainers, the scarily ambitious, the petty-minded staffers who make a big deal out of things that don't matter. Navigate too many difficult personalities day after day, and no wonder you're unhappy.

If a colleague is genuinely causing you grief on a regular basis, Hannon recommends inviting her for a one-on-one talk. "You'll need some backbone here, but be positive and do your best to be polite," she says. "Calmly explain that it's not okay to treat you this way or act the way he or she does. It's possible the person is unaware that what he or she is doing is upsetting you, and will apologize and back off."

If that doesn't work, or if the person making your work life miserable is a higher-up, talk to your manager or human resources about the situation. Be careful about asking if you can be reassigned. "It's not always easy for your manager to rearrange work assignments," says Jones, and inadvertently, you might be branded difficult yourself. "Unless there's a crisis, I'd start by asking your manager for guidance about how to work more effectively with that person," she adds. "Then, as a next step, ask if it is possible to modify your assignments so that you work with them less frequently."

Above all, Hannon suggests framing the situation as something solvable. "Describe what's been happening in detail, and explain how the situation is taking a toll on your ability to do your work," she says. "Focus on the potential solution rather than dwelling on the problem."

Related:Coworkers Behaving Badly: How To Keep 6 Toxic Colleagues In Check

7. Pursue Purpose In Your Job

Maybe your work lends much-needed help to others. Perhaps the money you earn allows you to afford a nicer life for your family. Or your job taps into skills you've worked hard to develop, and you feel proud when you are asked to use them. Whatever it is, even the worst job can offer benefits that fill you with real purpose and meaning. Keeping this in mind will lift your spirits, making you more invested.

It's not as hokey as it sounds. Research shows that people who feel that their work is meaningful are happier than those who have a high income. If you truly can't think of something uplifting you get from your gig, take it upon yourself to create that meaning—say, by starting a mentoring program, making yourself available to younger employees who are just finding their footing, or organizing an office blood drive.

"It's easy to lose track of what the point is or how you're contributing or helping people, but if you're actually providing a service or doing some good, that's a contribution," says Jones. "Focus on the meaning, on the contribution."

Related:Sunday Habits That Jump-Start Job Success All Week Long

This article originally appeared on LearnVest and is reprinted with permission.

A gorgeous tropical island, vintage hats from a style icon, and a Los Angeles cabaret.

8 things the Fast Company community is loving this month.

1. Palau Island

visit-palau.com
"I love to travel and recently visited the South Pacific island of Palau. In addition to some amazing scuba diving, we snorkeled in a lagoon full of nonvenomous jellyfish, which felt like swimming in a bowl of Jell-O: surreal and creepy." –Daphne Koller, cofounder and president, Coursera

2. Doughboys podcast

Free, feralaudio.com
"The Doughboys is basically two comedy writers eating at chain restaurants and rating them, but it's so much more. They savage each other without sounding like jerks. Also, they're really funny." –Jesse Thorn, owner, Maximum Fun; Fast Company MCP

3. Arbor Skateboards

From $129, arborcollective.com
"I got a sweet longboard from this Venice, Los Angeles, shop. I love skating my way into the office on my Arbor board." –John Tabis, CEO, Bouqs

4. Lana Turner hat exhibit

Free, redroosterharlem.com
"I'm thrilled that the Red Rooster restaurant in New York is showcasing the fabulous hats and vintage accessories from the collection of Harlem style icon Lana Turner, known for her curatorial eye and charm." –Thelma Golden, director and chief curator, Studio Museum in Harlem

5. Sushi Kashiba

Prices vary, sushikashiba.com
"My new favorite restaurant is Sushi Kashiba, which opened recently in Seattle's Pike Place Market. Hands down the best omakase I've had since I moved here 10 years ago." –Jeremy Wacksman, chief marketing officer, Zillow

6. Heal on-demand medical care

Copay or $99 flat fee, getheal.com
"The Heal app sends doctors on demand to your home. It's such a huge lifesaver that I don't have to wait in line at urgent care for earaches anymore." –Aaron Hirschhorn, founder and CEO, DogVacay

7. Nautilus magazine

$12 per issue, nautil.us
"This is a beautiful science, culture, and philosophy magazine that covers a new topic every month in print with a new chapter on that topic online every Thursday. It's inspiring for any designer interested in expanding their frameworks for seeing the world." –Mark Rolston, founder, Argodesign; Fast Company MCP

8. For the Record

From $77, fortherecordlive.com
"For the Record is a live cabaret that performs iconic movie songs from directors like John Hughes and Quentin Tarantino. It's a must-see if you're in Los Angeles." –Sarah Baum, senior director of UX design, eSalon