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The iPhone's 4-Incher

We've often suspected that the Wall Street Journal is an "official" leak source used by Apple to seed the media with slightly more directed rumors about its upcoming products. And now the WSJ has chimed in on the four-inch iPhone screen rumor and said yes, that it's indeed true ... Apple's buying screens in large numbers from suppliers and these are for an "at least" a four-inch display, with the phone going into production in June.

So far, so promising. But Reuters has since chimed in and said its sources have agreed with the WSJ and that a 4-inch iPhone is on its way. Why so much excitement about such a seemingly secondary feature of a smartphone? Because it marks a design departure for Apple and sets the scene for Apple's rivals--some of whom have already been pressing for bigger and bigger displays as a unique selling point for their Android phones. A bigger screen will also make the iPhone better as an e-reader (threatening Amazon's market somewhat) and as a glossy display for mobile app magazines...potentially giving a boost to this industry as well.

iMacs, MacBook Pros, and Even Airs To Get Retina Screens

The iPhone 4 brought the "retina" screen to the world's attention--a display with pixels so dense that you actually can't resolve the individual pixels with your weak, fleshy human eyeball, thus making displayed text look like printed quality and photos and images even more astonishing. The iPad 3 carries a similarly massive number of pixels and is probably better than every computer screen you've ever used. And that's why Apple's now said to be bringing retina displays to a revamped line of MacBook Pros, iMacs, and even its svelte MacBook Air, according to 9to5Mac.

The processing power to run these displays fits easily into the bigger chassis of the iMacs and MacBooks, but fitting it into the super-skinny Airs will take a little longer and may require Apple to use its proprietary battery power tech so that the ultra-portable machines still deliver long battery life. For this reason, we might not see them revealed at the same time as the bigger machines and they may not get much of an external design overhaul.

Skinny MacBook Pros

This is now looking like a dead cert: Apple's prepping its Air-inspired new MacBook Pros for a reveal at the upcoming WWDC event. They'll be ultra-thin, may come with a bias toward solid-state hard drives, and may not contain a DVD drive inside. They will be powered by Intel's new chips, Ivy Bridge, and they may also sport ultra-fast USB 3.0 tech alongside the Intel-Apple Thunderbolt port. 

iOS 6 And iCloud

iOS 6 is the next revamp of Apple's mobile operating system, and it looks like Apple's in advanced testing phases of the software because it's starting to show up in online analytics, as Apple's staff put it through its paces.

iOS 6 may well arrive alongside a revamped iCloud, which will include all sorts of new features like notifications on the website and more sophisticated web apps in general. It's also now thought that iCloud will get a video streaming feature so video clips can be shared around a household the way photos are in PhotoStream and that Apple will boost its photo-sharing system with the ability to comment and to share photos to other iCloud users. That sounds an awful lot like a photo-centric social network, and could explain why Apple ws rumored to be interested in buying Instagram.

Siri

Alongside the iOS 6 and iCloud update, Apple's also said to be revamping Siri, its cloud-service voice recognizing personal assistant. Siri has inspired many rivals and comes in for a lot of criticism, despite the fact that Nuance--the firm behind its voice-recognition tech--says it set a new high bar for understanding the human voice. With an update, Apple may lay many criticisms to rest because it's said to be coming to the iPad too and also, according to Daring Fireball to include an API so that other apps can interact with Siri, and be controlled by it. That means you may be able to get GPS navigation instructions, send a tweet, and maybe even launch and play games or other apps by voice control alone.

[Image: Flickr user bgarciagil ]

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

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News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

Via FierceWireless: Should Verizon’s current 3G customers decide to migrate toward 4G LTE pastures, their $30 unlimited data plans won’t be going with them. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo announced at a J.P. Morgan conference today that the company’s “grandfathered” 3G customers will have to purchase shared data plans if they upgrade to devices that are compatible with the newer LTE network. Till now, customers have been able to stay on unlimited plans as long as they had signed on before Verizon introduced tiered-pricing last July. The new shared plans will allow customers to connect multiple devices under one data plan, will arrive this summer, but Shammo did not share pricing information.

The announcement comes two weeks after AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company’s unlimited data plan, which it pulled in 2010, was his “only regret.”

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News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

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Google today launched the Knowledge Graph, a new search engine feature that helps users quickly find relevant information using semantic search technology. Now, when a user conducts a search, Google will return results with two right-hand-side panels that will include additional relevant information on the search subject, such as biographical data, as well as a list of related topics. The Knowledge Graph attempts to make the search process more user-friendly by providing information about a search result’s relationship to other, previously scattered pieces of data.

The Knowledge Graph is powered by both private and public databases, including Wikipedia, Freebase, and the CIA’s World Factbook, that feed into the graph’s current storehouse of information on more than 500 million people, places, and things. It’s the company’s most significant search engine enhancement since 2007, when its Universal Search feature sprinkled video, image, and shopping results into its main list of search results.

The Knowledge Graph will roll out nationwide over the next few days. The announcement comes one day after Microsoft made its newly launched slew of social features for competitor Bing available to all U.S. users.

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Mother's Day recently got me thinking about the power of Mom. No, I'm not talking about her power to get us to finish all our vegetables or clean up our rooms--I'm talking about her power in 2012 to brand.

Let's face it, the American mother is an incredibly iconic figure that is constantly changing and growing. That evolution is most evident from television over the years; from the sweet 1950s apron-and-pearls portrayals provided by Donna Reed and June Cleaver to today's TV housewives that are both Desperate and Real. Moms are long past being just about apple pie and folding laundry; they've become a force to be reckoned with on all fronts.

That became very apparent a few weeks ago when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen said a few words on CNN that set off a political firestorm of epic proportions. Rosen made the assertion that Ann Romney, the wife of Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, "never worked a day in her life" because she didn't work outside of the home.  

Moms rose up as one to state the obvious; stay-at-home parents are on the job 24/7. Can you even put a dollar sign on all they do? Well, Salary.com took a shot at with its Mom Salary Survey, concluding that a full-time mom should be making at least $110,000 per year.  And even if she was only being a mom part-time, she still should be making $66,000 on top of her regular paycheck.

Should be, but isn't--which is why some enterprising mothers are taking to the Internet to create a "celebrity mom" status for themselves and using it to brand their own entrepreneurial endeavors (at this point, who hasn't read Dooce or The Pioneer Woman?). It makes sense; according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one in four married mothers with children younger than 15 stay home with their kids--and they could probably use the extra household income. And running a business out of a home is increasingly commonplace. As a matter of fact, according to another U.S. Census survey, home is now where over half of the businesses in the U.S. are located.

There aren't any stats readily available on how many stay-at-home moms are becoming entrepreneurs (as CNN points out here), but you can find examples of  Mom power in action everywhere. Check out Dorothy Beal's site, Mile Posts, to see how this amazing woman and mother of five overcame a medical condition to become a marathon runner, and then branded herself to take advantage of sponsorship and advertising opportunities. Then there's Jen, The Suburban Mom, who promotes brands and special deals through her website, and Holly, who runs a fitness program to help transform any out-of-shape mom into a "Fit Yummy Mummy," at ClubFYM.com.    

These are just three examples of so-called "ordinary" moms who took tried-and-true branding principles and transformed themselves into marketing powerhouses. The lesson here? The ordinary becomes extraordinary when you leverage your everyday status to attract others just like you to your business. 

So, dads, you'll have to wait closer until Father's Day to get your due. In the meantime, let's not forget that when you turn "Mom" upside down, you get "Wow."   

However, I would first ask her permission before you do that.

JW Dicks (@jwdicks) & Nick Nanton (@nicknanton) are best-selling authors who consult for small- and medium-sized businesses on how to build their business through personality driven marketing, personal brand positioning, guaranteed media, and mining hidden business assets. They offer free articles, white papers, and case studies at celebritybrandingagency.com.

[Image: Flickr user Jason Rodman]

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New York City's government just announced a new listing service for tech jobs. But what about that pesky poor-business-broadband-in-NYC problem?

New York City matters to tech. It's also a place where the high-tech sector is largely tied into existing industries such as fashion (Gilt Groupe), marketing (Foursquare), and media (Tumblr). Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been outspoken in the past about diversifying New York's high-tech scene, and the city government has just unveiled a new tech job directory--Made in NY--that lists jobs from hundreds of local firms.

Bloomberg announced the initiative on Tuesday morning at Internet Week New York. At the press conference, NYC chief digital officer Rachel Sterne said the city government wants to attract engineers, programmers, coders, developers, and program managers from around the world--not just New York. The mayor then went on to criticize the H-1B Visa Cap that restricts foreign tech talent from entering the United States. Boosting and diversifying New York's tech sector has been one of Bloomberg's pet projects; a science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island was recently announced by Cornell University and Israel's Technion; the school (which was involved in a controversial bidding process) is expected to double the number of engineers graduating from the city's colleges and universities. Despite the robust tech efforts of NYU and Columbia University, New York has no nerd educational hub on the level of Stanford University or MIT.

The map launched with job info preloaded for over 325 tech firms, and also contains a visual guide to investors and coworking/incubator spaces. The investor roster mainly consists of A-list VC and financing firms (Union Square Ventures, Elevation Partners, Lerer Ventures) but also includes an impressive coworker/incubator space list that ranges from biggies like General Assembly to tiny coworking spaces in residential Brooklyn. NYC.gov created the map with the assistance of New York Tech Meetup members and the design was handled by Mike Bodge. Job information for the map is imported directly from the listings pages of participating companies--a challenge when it comes to future site maintenance.

A bigger issue for the growth of New York's tech sector is the wretched state of local broadband access. Although a much-vaunted recent study by the Center for the Urban Future said New York has the fastest-growing tech sector in the country, the same report said local broadband infrastructure rates a solid B-. Despite New York's status as the world's top business hub, technical factors make it difficult to acquire broadband redundancy--a must-have for many firms. Both FiOS and Time Warner Cable commercial broadband are regularly plagued by outages; Internet connection speeds also vary wildly from building to building. A larger issue is the fact that high-speed commercial Internet is severely limited in cheaper outlying neighborhoods--as tech firms who are leaving high-priced Silicon Alley and DUMBO for cheaper Greenpoint and Long Island City have found to their chagrin.

At the Internet Week press conference, Mayor Bloomberg ducked an audience question on the poor quality of broadband infrastructure. On-stage representatives from the city government said that a new broadband improvement announcement would be made in the coming weeks, but no details were given.

Mayor Bloomberg, as always, is an aggressive cheerleader for the city's tech sector. He riffed off an audience question by claiming that tech-heavy Manhattan neighborhoods like NoHo and Chelsea held the same allure for Internet entrepreneurs as Brighton Beach does for immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The Mayor's team also brought Josh Miller, the 21-year-old CEO of Branch, on stage. Branch moved from New York to Silicon Valley and back in the past year; on-stage, Miller boasted about how New York gives entrepreneurs far more opportunities than California. The CEO, who has raised millions in VC, also told the crowd how he “never had a real job” before starting Branch.

In the biggest surprise of the press conference, Bloomberg appeared to criticize Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not giving enough to charity. After an audience member asked Bloomberg what he thought of the upcoming Facebook IPO, Bloomberg declined a direct answer and instead urged Zuckerberg to “give something back” and to engage more in philanthropic efforts. Perhaps Bloomberg was upset that Zuckerberg's philanthropic efforts are mainly west of the Hudson?

For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, here or find him on Twitter and Google+.

[Image: Flickr user Charley Lhasa]

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Steve Weathers, president and CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority, shares five things you need to know about opening a business in the Hostess City of the South.

UNITED STATES OF INNOVATION New Ideas, New Markets, New Insights

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startups new options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick.

CLICK HERE for pockets of innovation in other U.S. cities.

Can you name the top four ports in the United States? Los Angeles and New York-New Jersey are obvious guesses for Nos. 1 and 2; Long Beach, comes as no surprise at No. 3. But Savannah as No. 4 (by container weight, according to 2009 Census data) is unexpected--as are many other aspects of this entrepreneur-friendly city.

Founded in 1733, Savannah’s fertile environs grew cotton in abundance, while its snakingly convenient waterways to and from the Atlantic Ocean gave rise to a powerful port that has dominated ever since. During the Civil War, Sherman’s notorious “march to the sea” culminated in Savannah before heading north to ultimate victory; Savannah surrendered on Sherman’s arrival, preserving much of its historic downtown from destruction. Today tourists throng the city’s genteel streets.

Capitalizing on its port, Savannah is still strong in manufacturing: It counts jetmaker Gulfstream, International Paper, and construction equipment maker JCB among its corporate titans (not to mention that queen of unhealthy Southern cooking, Paula Deen Enterprises). Meanwhile, its startup scene is rife with technology, e-commerce, and graphic and motion design firms like Rails Machine, CommerceV3, and Paragon--a niche further fortified by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and Georgia Southern University.

What can the “Hostess City of the South” offer startups next? We talked to Steve Weathers, president and CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) to find out. Here, he shares five things you need to know about starting a business in Savannah.

Think of Savannah as one mighty supply chain…

The Port of Savannah’s dominance springs from its convenient location: close to the Atlantic, I-95, and inland waterways and railroads that run west from the waterfront. As a result, it's able to feed an entire supply chain. He cites Coastal Logistics Group as an example of how the port helps weave together related industries: “They’re a UPS on steroids,” he says. “They take a big piece of equipment and package it up for shipping [inland]. Or if you need it unboxed and assembled, then shipped to you, they’ll do that too.” Quite a few manufacturers--like Mitsubishi Power Systems, JCB, Imperial Sugar, and Diageo-Guinness Brands--opened key locations in Savannah to stay close to its massive distribution capabilities. The city is horizontally integrated, too: International Paper complements Weyerhaeuser’s bleached pulp products and Arizona Chemical’s pine-based chemicals and resins. Gulfstream operates in a thick military supply chain, which includes Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield.

…that operates globally, in both directions.

A relative newcomer to Savannah, Weathers has been instrumental in two key SEDA projects: joining the World Trade Center Association and launching SEDA Ventures, their VC arm, which goes live this summer. Weathers’ goal is a “fully integrated economic development chain,” he says. “If you walk in and say: Here’s my great technology, we’d look at that opportunity and assess where you need to go next. We could help you get into international markets [via the WTC Association], or we can get you an equity infusion via our VC fund.” That might mean helping you sell your newfangled mobile technology in Japan, say, or insourcing manufacturing from a foreign firm who’d benefit from Savannah’s transportation network in the states.

Weathers came to Savannah from Toledo, where he founded and ran Rocket Ventures, a $22 million venture fund that he says launched 80 local companies during his tenure. Rocket eventually joined forces with the University of Toledo, shuttling innovations from the classroom to market--a model Weathers wants to replicate in Savannah. In looking for small-time ventures with outsize promise, Weathers says, “we’ll play above the angel investors but below the A-level funders." SEDA Ventures’s own cash investment will provide larger funders with a locally based watchdog and make them more likely to chip in their own funding, Weather says. “Lots of VC aren’t interested” in new businesses in second-tier cities like Savannah, Weathers says. “But they could be if they know they have boots on the ground there.”

Southern hospitality is legit, y'all. 

Southern gentility is alive and well in Savannah, even in the business community. Numerous organizations work together to support area startups, whether it’s ThincSavannah for co-working space, Savannah’s chapter of Startuplounge, a startup incubator for Georgia businesses, or The Creative Coast, supporting “creative and innovative businesses” in Savannah. (They also co-sponsor TEDxCreativeCoast in Savannah, which rolls around for the third time on May 18.)

For untapped brainpower, look to Savannah's universities.

Savannah College of Art and Design ranks among the nation’s leading design universities--impressive for a city of only 130,000 people. Yet Weathers believes the university’s brainpower has only been barely tapped to drive local businesses. “I toured SCAD’s facilities recently,” Weathers says, “and learned about 40 different technologies with potential in the marketplace. We could create 40 brand-new technology companies right there.” Cross-pollinate a SCAD design team in fashion with, say, talent from the material sciences lab at nearby Georgia Southern University or a powerhouse engineering teach from Georgia Tech, and you could make the next smart fabric.

Watch your wallet (and the weather report).

Savannah is plagued with many of the ills New Orleans is also known for: indifferent-to-bad public schools, high risk of floods and hurricanes, considerable poverty and surprisingly high crime--it ranks in the nation’s top 10% for violent and property crimes. Liberals may cringe at the idea of living so deep in red-state Georgia (although with Atlanta, Athens, and Savannah, you’ll find plenty of folks with an independent streak). Talent may need to be lured here from bigger hotbeds, but luckily Savannah isn’t deficient on other charms.

“What do people think of when they think of Savannah?” Weathers asks. “They think of the port, all its history, it’s a beautiful place. If I asked you about San Diego, you’d say right away it’s a technology mecca. We can make that happen here, too. Savannah is a hidden jewel; the opportunities [it offers] are just surfacing.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #USInnovation.

[Image: Flickr user Stuck In Customs]

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By establishing your business as the truly remarkable option in a field full of snoozers and look-alikes, you will get more free and effective publicity than any traditional advertising budget can buy.

Being remarkable is a never-ending process. To differentiate yourself from your competitors, you need to commit to the pursuit of constant innovation. As soon as you change the game by offering your customers remarkable products and services and talking to them in new and exciting ways, your competition will have to respond, upping the ante with innovations of their own. This means that if you want to lead the way and truly own your market space instead of always playing catch-up with the competition, you can’t just make a few tactical changes and call it a day. You have to be constantly thinking of new ways to be remarkable.

Experience Mapping

A strong remarkable comes from understanding the pains and problems of your prospects. There is no faster way to understand how your company can create a better experience for its customers than by addressing their pains with strong, clear solutions.

Tripod Technology, a software development company, was having trouble with clients wanting to make substantial changes to their custom software applications after the development process was complete. They realized that in order to satisfy the customer pain of wanting to experience their new software during the development stage, Tripod Technology could create a clickable online demo that acts like the proposed software, allowing their clients to run interactive tests before development even began. Word spread fast of Tripod Technology’s innovative new customer-centric approach to software creation. The result has been a more ample share of new development opportunities since they initiated this remarkable into their sales program.

To be remarkable, you must be able to stand in the shoes of your client or prospect. Very few business owners or entrepreneurs take the time to view their business through the eyes of the customer, to experience it as they do.

It’s too bad because this is an invaluable exercise and one of the key steps to becoming remarkable. It’s sometimes hard to see where your own business fails or falls short precisely because you are so close to it on a day-to-day basis.

Little Wows

Improving the customers’ experience should be the goal of every company that’s intent on living out their remarkables. Experience mapping is about more than just correcting small flaws or oversights in your day-to-day routines (though that’s a necessary first step that, with time, should become second nature). To truly improve your customers’ overall experience, you need to insert “little wows” into your standard operating procedures.

When Disney wanted to make their resort experience more magical, they challenged every member of their staff, from executives to support personnel, to come up with new ways of improving each guest’s visit. The housekeeping staff dreamt up one particularly remarkable innovation.

All Disney resort visitors find a plush Mickey Mouse toy waiting for them in their rooms, available for purchase at the end of the stay. When guests check in, they are amazed to find Mickey all tucked into the bed, watching TV. The next evening, after a day of fun and excitement, the family returns to find Mickey taking a shower! Then, on the last day of their visit, Mickey is waiting patiently by the window for his new family to return. Each one of those “little wows” is not remarkable alone. But by gradually building the customer’s excitement, by the end of the trip, the entire process becomes exponentially remarkable. The little wows created by bringing a child’s favorite animated character to life are priceless when it comes to the overall customer experience. And it doesn’t cost the company a dime--just a few minutes of extra effort on the part of the housekeeping staff.

When it comes to living the remarkables, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and intimidated by so many changes. Many companies, including your competition, are probably throwing up their hands in frustration and deciding that it’s just too hard. But it doesn’t have to be.

Start with the most important change that you can imagine. What will make you truly stand out from your competition? After you’ve made that big change, all you have to do is make one or two little tweaks at a time to stay ahead of the pack.

Remarkable Action Steps

1. Make a list of everything you think you are doing that is remarkable. Check that list against competitors, ask around the office, and poll your peers in the industry. If any other companies are saying something similar then, unfortunately, it isn’t remarkable. Even if they aren’t yet executing, it still isn’t remarkable. Sorry--We never said this was going to be easy.

2. Now that you have a list, it’s time to prioritize. As we mentioned, you won’t be able to do everything right away. Pick the remarkable that will drive the most interest in your market, get the most buzz, and really get people talking. Start by implementing that product, service, or tactic and then, when it’s up and running, get started on the next most significant idea in your arsenal.

3. Too often we take our surroundings for granted. Figure out a way to gain a fresh perspective on your business environment. Map your customer’s experience. Stand in the shoes of your client to understand their pain points and how to address them.

From "Fire Your Sales Team Today!" coauthored by Mike Lieberman and Eric Keiles, cofounders of Square 2 Marketing (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2012).

[Image: Flckr user Tom Bricker (WDWFigment)]

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New research shows just how much we love to talk about ourselves. Twitter and Facebook have built massive platforms on this premise. How long before many other brands grab a piece of our action?

You run through the latest collection of your party photos, psyched to share the best ones with a few good friends. You email them and post them on Instagram and Facebook. Then you realize what everyone will really be looking at in the pics. Hint: It’s not you, it's them. The first thing they’re scanning for is to make sure they look good. They then look at the people surrounding themselves in the image. In this case they’re not nearly as interested in how good-looking the people are, they’re more concerned about how popular they themselves appear, and that they’re being seen with the "right people."

When we talk about ourselves, there is heightened activity in the region of the brain concerned with reward and satisfaction--and often associated with food, money, and sex.

Over the past year, I’ve used eye-tracking technology to study exactly how obsessed we are with ourselves. What I've found is that, more than ever, we’re hardwired to be this way--regardless of culture, age, or gender. This goes a ways toward explaining the latest craze sweeping Japan. It’s not a new gadget, or more exotic sushi. No, it’s something as traditional as a postage stamp. As part of a recent incentive to encourage the Japanese to send letters, Japan Post issued a series of stamps with an entirely new format. These stamps were not emblazoned with royal profiles, historical personas, striking flowers, or rare birds; rather, they offered the opportunity for the consumer to place their own face on the letter.

How did we get here?

One need look no further than Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to get a sense of how willing people are to reveal all--to say nothing of the countless throngs of bloggers still clogging your RSS feeds. But surely this goes beyong mere narcissism, which every one agrees is a powerful force. Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir, along with her colleague Jason Mitchell, set out to study why we are essentially motivated toward self-disclosure and, well, bragging.

The researchers recently set up a series of laboratory tests to find out what value people placed on various opportunities for self-disclosure. Using fMRI, they tracked the brain flows of the respondents, to see what parts of their brain were activated when they answered serious questions about their inspirations and beliefs, as well as casual questions about pizza preferences, say, or what sports they like to watch. The scientists offered money as an incentive for the subjects to answer certain questions that nothing to do with themselves. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Tamir said, "We joked that this was the penny for your thoughts study."

And yet, despite the financial incentive, the subjects were willing to relinquish between 17-25% of their potential earnings, in order to reveal information about themselves. What Tamir and Mitchell found was that when people speak about themselves, there is heightened activity in the region of the brain belonging to the meso-limbic dopamine system. This is the area interested in reward and satisfaction, often associated with food, money, and sex.

If you are suddenly smelling a market opportunity, rest assured that you are not alone. So what might this pleasure of self-disclosure mean for the future of brands? For starters I predict we’ll begin to see unusual brand alliances. It’s likely corporate brands will offer consumers a "soapbox" from which individuals can pimp their own identity. Indeed Best Buy has of late been doing just this by featuring tech innovators as the faces of the products the chain sells--check out Instagram's Kevin Systrom, the guys behind Words With Friends, and other creators in the clip below.

The Japanese have also already grasped this notion. In fact I noticed this trend emerging a few years ago when Japan’s largest noodle manufacturer encouraged chefs from local eateries to feature their portraits on mass-market noodles produced in small quantities, and only sold in the local restaurant and the surrounding retail outlets. Pretty impressive, when you think about it. On the one hand, the noodle company is leveraging their big-muscle brand power, while at the same time they’re tapping into the brand equity of the local chef who is known and respected in the neighborhood. I suspected then that this form of individual branding was merely the beginning.

On my most recent visit to Asia, I was invited to view one of the largest plastic molding facilities in China. They wanted to showcase an amazing new technology. Using an ordinary camera, the company demonstrated how they could capture a photo and convert it into a 3-D figure, in two short minutes. But that’s not all. There were hundreds of images at the ready. I could, for example, select Homer Simpson’s impressive midriff, and put a photo of my face on top of it. For good measure, I could add a pair of Mickey Mouse’s ears. The quality was as impressive as the versatility it offered. Oh, and it could all be done for the grand sum of $2.

As technology improves and the cost of production decreases, personal branding will no longer be in the domain of an elite few. Soon every Smith, Singh, and Lee will become his or her own brand on anything and everything, everywhere. Printing centers have been offering this feature for years--we’re all well familiar with the local plumbers’ fridge magnets--but there’s a new generation of merchandising making its way to you, and it promises to make you the center of the universe. It won’t be long before brands are forced to create alliances with each and every one of their customers. You might want to clear your calendar.

[Images: Home page, Flickr user 1000heads; Top, Flickr user Ellen Munro]

Read more by Lindstrom: Want To Be More Creative? Get Bored

 

Martin Lindstrom is a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine's "World's 100 Most Influential People" and author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best–seller. His latest book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, was published in September. A frequent advisor to heads of numerous Fortune 100 companies, Lindstrom has also authored 5 best-sellers translated into 30 languages. More at martinlindstrom.com.

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If you’re not the type who can sit on a park bench and contemplate nothing, and the conversation around the Keurig machine bores you, what can you do with 15 minutes that isn’t really work but pays off in productivity?

After 90 minutes of meeting, working, thinking, and pushing emails, your glucose is in a bad place. That’s what project management consultant Tony Wong tells his clients. And everyone from NASA to the Berlin Academy of Music have run tests that prove you truly need the equivalent of a smoke break, a shift change, whatever you want to call it.

But let’s say you’re not the type who can sit on a park bench and contemplate nothing, and the conversation around the Keurig machine bores you. What can you do with 15 minutes that isn’t really work, but pays off in productivity?

Stand up and go somewhere, anywhere.

Sitting still at your computer is really harmful, no matter how many mountain bike trails you conquer on Saturday. All you have to do to beat back the creep of fat accumulation, heart disease, diabetes, and simple tiredness is to stand up for two minutes, every 20 minutes, as New York Times fitness columnist Gretchen Reynolds advises. You can set your timer of choice to go off every 20 minutes, or rely on something like 20 Cubed for Chrome that’s custom-built for the task.

Walking around is even better, but all you really have to do is stand up. You can make a quick phone call, check Twitter on your phone, and pretend you’re reading an email, the important thing is that you get your butt out of your seat.

If you feel guilty (or feel you’re being watched) on your two-minute standing break, try thinking of it instead as the equivalent of a 10-minute break every 90 minutes, which is, as noted, just about when you’ll hit your own focus wall. Add another 5 or 10 minutes, and you’re the healthiest, least pressure-cooked person at work.

Give yourself a “shower moment”

It’s a cliche that the best ideas come to us in the bathroom, in the shower, or in the baking supplies section of the supermarket. One Columbia Business School professor sought to figure out the real reason why we do so much better in those moments than in times we set aside for formal brainstorming or planning. William Duggan discovered a big part of the answer had already been written by a 19th Century Prussian General who obsessed over Napoleon. As Duggan explains it, General Carl von Clausewitz determined that part of Napoleon’s strategical brilliance involved:

… reaching a presence of mind free of all preconceptions, allowing the mind to make its own connections in a flash of insight, and resolving to execute the course of action despite potential resistance, he said.

Most of us don’t have minds as singular and focused as Napoleon’s (probably for the better). But we can aide our minds in gaining flash insights by focusing on a menial but mindful task, like walking the dog, or washing the dishes. Come up with some rote task you sorta-kinda need to do twice a day at work, and you'll give your mind the crucial strategy time it needs to make connections.

Connect with your mentors, and mentor others

"Mentoring" feels like such a heavy, official word, so call it "advising," or "coaching" if you like. By setting aside regular breaks to give people advice on their projects, or their career path, you are also reinforcing your own goals and values. 

If you’re new to a field, or you feel you always have a ways to go, you need to get your own mentor. It doesn’t have to be someone who’s an unreachable top-shelf pro; having a younger mentor can be an energizing relationship. If it feels awkward to reach out and ask someone for free help, take career columnist Penelope Trunk’s advice: do lots of favors, figure out when it’s easy for them to talk or email, and go out of your way to meet in person.

A quick email, phone call, or IM exchange with your mentor or mentee easily fits inside your break. If you haven’t found the right individual yet, consider being a kind of meta-mentor by contributing to answers with your expertise on Quora, community projects and wikis, and other sites that you never have time for you in your personal web browsing.

Meditate for just two minutes

Does meditation absolutely, scientifically clear your mind, make it stronger, and produce measurably greater work product? No, and the science isn’t quite there to prove a direct correlation either way. But it works for some people, and as blogger and minimalist enthusiast Leo Babuta explains, you can start a practice with literally two minutes. It’s more about making meditation a habit than mastering the art, and it doesn’t require pillows, music, or anything, really, but a place to sit.

Meditation fits nicely into a break on a few levels. You’ll find yourself fighting against it, trying to avoid actually taking a break from thinking about all that stuff you have to do. But the benefits of getting away from your desk, thinking beyond your inbox, or just thinking about nothing are huge.

[Image: Flickr user wakingphotolife]

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How Fab.com pivoted from a failed social network for gays to a retailing powerhouse valued at $200 million in less than 6 months. The third in our Pivot series.

Bradford Shellhammer and Jason Goldberg realized it just wasn't working.

Their gay social network, Fabulis, a mashup of Facebook, Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Foursquare, wasn't exactly failing but it was exhibiting the telltale signs of mediocrity. Like most entrepreneurs, they started out thinking they had a winner when they launched in April 2010, a clear niche they could serve. While there was Grindr and plenty of porn, there was no place online for gays to find relevant information about who to meet and where to go that wasn't focused on sex. In the beginning Fabulis was off to a strong start, signing up 50,000 members in its first three months, but then membership slowed, barely cracking 100,000 at the eight-month mark. At this rate, they'd be lucky to generate $10 million in revenue--this after raising $3 million in financial backing. "It was an eye-opening experience because even if you have this great idea and you build a really great product, people may not want it," Shellhammer says.

The two friends realized their mashup model had a fatal flaw, and this made it nearly impossible to crack users' "mindshare": Why would gays using Facebook, Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Foursquare switch to Fabulis when they were already well served by those social networks? After all, being straight isn't a social characteristic nor is being gay. For instance, they had introduced a check-in feature for users to visit bars and the like and rate them, an application Shellhammer dubbed "Gay Square." But they couldn't even convince their friends to try it. "We were like, ‘Why isn't anyone using it? It's so cool,'" Shellhammer says, "and they were like, 'Because we're checking in on Facebook.'"

Shellhammer and Goldberg had been friends for more than a decade, and took stock of their situation over a series of heart-to-heart talks over more than a few bottles of Bordeaux. Each, they agreed, brought different skills and acumen to the table. Goldberg was a serial entrepreneur (he blogs about his experiences here); he had founded a social news service with a handful of developers and $800,000 in angel money, which sold less than a year later for $7.5 million. He was good at building websites, designing viral marketing campaigns, and engaging people online. Shellhammer, who had studied design at Parsons and was once one of Design Within Reach's top salespeople, was good at selling furniture, talking with designers--in his LinkedIn profile he says he's "a classic connector with an eye for color and design"--and he has great taste. Now, a lot of people think they have taste, but Shellhammer, who owns roughly 140 pairs of shoes, really does. His homes have been featured in The New York Times, Dwell and Time Out New York.

One of Fabulis's few bright spots was the "Gay Deal of the Day" through which they sold chocolates, lube, underwear, T-shirts, chairs, hamburgers--and anything else they could think of. It dawned on them they didn't have to build something and hope someone would use it in the hopes they could monetize it down the road. This was classic retail; no gray area. They make money by selling something, which was almost as old as human time itself, and in the process, they could tap a far bigger market. "Our whole pitch is we were for gay men," Shellhammer says, "so when we had overwhelming amounts of women come on and buy this Lucky's Hamburger deal, suddenly we're like, ‘Okay, so we sold 2,000 of these today, but half of them have women's names. Women like to shop, women like a deal."

About This Series

The speed of today's well-funded startups is brutal.

But it does allow for change in direction. This series explores those destiny-altering decisions made by companies that have gone on to great success. Read more about their course corrections--and alternate endings--here.

On February 26th, 2011, they met with their investors and with $1.2 million in the bank explained their plans to pivot--or perhaps more accurately, reset their strategy--to a flash retail site. Goldberg, who initially invested $350,000 of his own money, announced he was putting in an additional $250,000, and said, "You guys can either stay in or take your money out." No one chose to leave. In retrospect, it was a wise decision.

They shut down Fabulis and Goldberg bought the fab.com domain, although he was reluctant to reveal how much he paid. I asked, "If I were to say $200,000, would I be off by a lot?" and he replied, "You would not be off by a lot. In fact, you'd be the first person I've ever said that to." At any rate, it was a bargain, since three-letter domains appraise for a couple of million dollars.

They posted a splash page that showed pictures of Shellhammer's apartment with a message: "Sign up now to be notified when we launch," and this unveiled their new aesthetic. Meanwhile Goldberg unleashed a viral marketing campaign three months before fab.com relaunched. Not unlike PayPal, which offered a new user $10 for signing up and an additional $10 for each person he referred, fab.com, through a program called "Invite Your Friends and Earn Cash," set up inducements for each future user to become a de facto marketer. Convince 10 friends to join and you got a $30 credit; if you get 25 members, you receive an additional $30. You become a Prime Time member with 50 friends joining fab.com, and that meant free shipping for two months. Plus each user got a $25 credit for a friend's first $25 purchase within 30 days of joining. They also created an aspirational wall not unlike Pinterest, which let people share the kinds of products they wanted to buy. By June the new site counted 165,000 prelaunch users, with only 5,000 originating from their old business, Fabulis.

"People shared it before we even had a product to sell, because the idea was exciting and no one had done it yet," Shellhammer says.

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Social media enabled Fab to amplify exponentially the old tried and true of someone finds an amazing chair, they bring it home and tell four friends about it when they come over. In the same way people see something on Fab, they go crazy about it and tell their friends. "That happens with design," Goldberg says. "No one's telling all their friends about the towels they saw on a certain site or a trash can they saw on a certain site. It's about stuff that people love; it's genuine."

While Goldberg handled the site, Shellhammer concentrated on the retail component, meeting with designers and loading up on inventory. Their new model was to offer 70% discounts on products that Shellhammer would handpick for their aesthetic beauty and function while designers would drop-ship so that fab.com wouldn't hold inventory. Right out of the box growth was torrential. Fab.com, which some have likened to "a combination of Gilt and Tumblr on a design bender," launched on June 9th and within 12 days was cash-flow positive, amassing $600,000 in sales and counting 215,000 subscribers. Eames chairs and other furniture, minimalist Swedish headphones, umbrellas and shoes all sold well, as did 200,000 antique typewriters. Shellhammer says Jimmy Jane vibrators are so far their biggest selling product.

In July, Shellhammer and Goldberg raised $8 million in a Series A, and by November had 1 million members; a month later Andreessen Horowitz led a Series B for $40 million, based on a valuation of $200 million. By February 2012 fab.com counted 2 million subscribers and today has more than 3 million, with 80% of its daily traffic based in the U.S. Furthermore, its mobile app, introduced in October, contributes 40% of fab.com's daily traffic, and half of its users to date have come via social channels. It's also been on a buying spree, acquiring NYC-based FashionStake to help it enter the apparel sector, and German Casacanda to expand its presence into Germany.

Ultimately, Shellhammer and Goldberg see Fab.com as a global brand and project revenues of $100 million by the end of this year. From a handful of employees a year ago they now employ 165 in New York, another 50 in Berlin, and 50 more in India. At the end of 2011 they counted 1.5 million members, which has almost tripled in five months, and they've launched Fab.com in 16 countries. 

While their business is thriving, Shellhammer's former employer, Design Within Reach, is not, having delisted its stock on Nasdaq in 2009 when it fell to $5 a share. Could Fab be a DWR killer? Shellhammer wouldn't comment, but Goldberg says, "We are actually making Design Within Reach affordable and our shop has endless capacity. We're not restrained by shelf space nor product category nor price points."

For anyone who doesn't know the backstory fab.com might seem an overnight success, but nothing could be further from the truth. It took hitting the reset button. It took some serious pivoting.

Adam L. Penenberg is a journalism professor at NYU and a contributing writer to Fast Company. Follow him on Twitter: @penenberg

[Images: Fab.com]

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About 2,000 years before Clayton Christensen coined “disruption” or Renee Mauborgne the “blue ocean,” Chinese strategists passed down a fable about a peasant who stole a sheep. The fable defines a strategic pattern that many have labeled since: a pattern at the heart of history’s most significant companies, social movements, and civilizations. Richard Branson gets it. Mohandas Gandhi got it. And if you understand the pattern, you too can just walk away with the prize, while your competition looks on unable to react.

Here is the pattern:

1. The peasant (you) sees an opportunity. The sheep is roaming free for the taking.

2. But the shepherd (your competition) wants to stop you from taking it.

3. You identify a commitment that will prevent the shepherd (your competition) from stopping you.

4. You take action; you steal the sheep (the new market opportunity).

5. The shepherd stands frozen before an impossible choice. If he chases after you he leaves his entire flock unprotected, so he must let you go.

Consider Phaneesh Murthy, founder and CEO of iGATE (NASDAQ: IGTE), one of the fastest-growing Indian IT firms, headquartered in Silicon Valley where Murthy is based. iGATE has grown to $1 billion in revenue from $300 million in under five years, and its stock price has tripled in that time. It is consistently ranked as one of the best Indian companies to work for.

Murthy learned the “sheep stealing” pattern decades ago as an early leader at Infosys, one of the two Indian firms that transformed the country into an IT outsourcing powerhouse. The Infosys story is inspiring. I covered it in detail in my third book, The Way of Innovation.

In Murthy’s New York hotel room overlooking buzzing mid-afternoon streets, he summarized the pattern succinctly.

“You take what a company sees as an asset and turn it into a liability,” he says. “For example, when we launched Infosys, the big technology consulting firms saw their armies of onsite consultants as an asset. Outsourcing turned that asset into a liability.”

The result is now history; Infosys transformed how not just software is built but entire industries as a result.

Murthy left Infosys in part to apply the pattern again. The asset he sees his former employer and their peers like Wipro now attached to is having armies of developers swarming their campuses. I’ve visited both Wipro’s and Infosys’ campuses, with bike lanes, basketball courts, fountains, and even luxury dorms.

So Murthy is seeking to turn this perceived asset--the size of their army of developers--into a liability. The logic is radical, so let me lay it down piece by piece.

First, iGATE stopped charging by the hour, as nearly every other IT firm does, because when you charge by the hour you generate, according to Murthy, “diametrically opposed objectives...the customer always wants to reduce and company wants to increase [the hours a job takes].” (One day a law firm will figure out how to do this!)

Then you charge for performance. For example, iGATE agreed to build a loan-processing system for a bank, at its own expense, and charge the bank $1,000 per loan processed (a huge discount from the bank’s $2,500 average cost at the time). With this structure iGATE aligns its interests with its clients.

They learn the customer’s business and make discoveries and improvements that no traditional IT company could convince their clients to pay for. For example, at the time making consumer loan decisions was done manually by expensive, highly trained underwriters. iGATE believed they could replace those underwriters with a set of rules. Their client was skeptical, but since iGATE was covering the development cost, the client had nothing to lose. iGATE gave it a try and it worked. 

Accepted dogma held that a lender’s pull-through rate--the percentage of customers that accept the loan after it is approved--depended on the loan specifications (rate, term, etc.). iGATE had a different hypothesis: None of that really mattered; all that mattered was how quickly the lender turned around the approval. Again, since the client had nothing to lose, they gave iGATE the go-ahead to prove their hypothesis. iGATE invested in reducing the turnaround time to 17 days from over 40 days on average. As a result the client’s pull-through rate jumped to 75% from 42%. 

Now, Infosys and Wipro could certainly copy this pay-for-results model. But doing so is disruptive because the strategy conflicts with their commitments. Their organizations, incentive systems, and mindsets are geared toward selling hours and deploying people. The iGATE model would force the utilization and employee metrics they are so committed to growing to reverse direction. So if history plays out as it has for 2,000 years, the competition will think and plan and test and measure, potentially for years, protecting their flock while iGATE walks away with the sheep.

I know I should end the story here, but I can’t resist a short preview. Three hours before meeting with Murthy, I was standing 50 blocks south in a boardroom presenting to the CEO and top team of one of the world’s largest book publishers. I laid out the strategy of a fascinating disruptor I had met early in the week that is applying the same strategic principle to disrupt the children’s learning market. A million downloads in their first two weeks indicate it is working. Stay tuned.

To apply this pattern ask:

1. What is my competition committed to?

2. What does that tell me they will not do or defend?

3. What opportunity does that present to me?

[Image: Flickr user h.koppdelaney]

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Facebook's Beacon was a bomb. Will this e-commerce site figure out the right way to let friends see what friends are buying?

Four and a half years ago, Facebook launched Beacon, a feature that showed users what their friends were buying. The social network thought the idea would be a hit, but it backfired (and quickly folded) after users felt like their privacy was being violated.

Today design e-commerce site Fab is launching a similar feature, but it thinks it's actually going to get the idea right. "Beacon was a good idea horribly implemented," CEO Jason Goldberg tells Fast Company.

Starting today, Fab users will be able to see what items their Facebook friends are buying, favoriting, or sharing. But whereas Facebook immediately turned on Beacon for all users, Fab's service will be opt-in, Goldberg says, so people can choose whether they want to participate or not.

"People have to feel like they can trust the service," Goldberg says. "They have to believe it adds value for them."

And Goldberg thinks they will because, he says, it more closely replicates the serendipitous nature of shopping in real life, where friends introduce each other to great things they've found.

That's because, at its core, Fab isn't about task-based shopping, the way Amazon is (as in "I need a hammer so let me go online to find a hammer that I like"). Rather, it's more about window shopping, or what Goldberg calls "discovery" (as in "I'm not looking for anything in particular, but if I see something I like, I'll get it"). Under that second rubric, a system will do better, the theory goes, if it does a better job of putting things in front of the user that they're likely to like.

In December, the site launched a page called "Live Feed," which shows visitors what all other users on the site are buying, liking, sharing, and tweeting, and Fab saw its conversion rate triple. Fifteen percent of visits to that page result in a sale, compared with 5% for the site as a whole.

So, Goldberg says, "follow the user." If showing them what all users like produces better results, it would seem logical that a friends-only filter would do even better. "We think much more of our traffic is going to go through Live Feed," Goldberg says.

See also: Innovation Agents: Fab's Bradford Shellhammer Embraces Risk, Redefines Design

[Image: Flickr user oxfordian.world]

E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter. Twitter | Google+ | Email

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News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

A new survey from BIA/Kelsey has looked at the trends in advertising on social media and concluded that by 2016 it'll be a market topping $10 billion per annum, mainly as display ads. For context, some $3.8 billion was spent on these ads in 2011, so phenomenal growth is predicted. In the very week Facebook IPOs this sounds like great news, except for different data coming from Wordstream that suggests Facebook's adverts have less reach and are less effective in generating click-throughs than traditional web ads served up by Google. Meanwhile car giant GM is reported by the Wall Street Journal to be killing its $10 million Facebook advertising campaign because it simply didn't work to generate sales. GM will continue to use free channels on Facebook to generate brand awareness, but its decision means Facebook will lose out on income.

Visit our main Fast Feed page through the day to keep abreast of news like this!

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News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

Via WSJ: General Motors’ marketing executives have decided to pull the company’s $10 million in paid Facebook after deeming the efforts had “little impact” in reaching consumers. The announcement comes three days before Facebook’s initial public offering. The company will continue to use the Facebook platform to promote its brands, operating on a $30 million budget that covers content creation and management. GM, the third largest advertiser in the U.S. behind Procter & Gamble and AT&T, spent $1.83 billion on U.S. advertisements in 2011. Though GM’s decision may be immaterial to Facebook’s $3.7 billion revenue figure, the announcement comes as Facebook executives attempt to assure investors that its advertising business is solid enough to merit the company’s near-certain $100 billion valuation.

Visit our main Fast Feed page during the day to catch up on news like this as it happens.

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A fresh clutch of patent applications from Google hints at the mysterious search algorithm. Plus, ideas for product placement on YouTube and more on Google's Project Glass.

Personalizing Google Search

Google's algorithm doesn't just decide what pops up on the first page of search results. It's the stuff of complex third-party angst, law-making, lawsuits, and even the idea that the algorithm, based ultimately on decisions by human programmers, is protected under U.S. free speech laws. Google's hyper-sensitive to it too, which makes brand-new U.S. patent number 8180776 all the more interesting.

It's designed to "provide a mechanism and a methodology by which the user can variably adjust the degree to which his interests influence the results of a given search query." It seems a bit like the way you can decide which status updates from which of your friends on Facebook are flowed into your "news" feed--Google's patent outlines a set of parameters that you can adjust so that they affect which search results are featured in its response page after you type in a search query.

The problem with most searches is that while they are very good at matching the words in your query with results, they're not good at reflecting users' personal interests. As Google suggests in the introduction to the patent, this means if two people search for "drug testing in baseball" they'll get the same results even if one is, perhaps professionally, looking to understand drug use in society, and the other is just interested in the sports angle of which teams have applied drug test protocols.

As useful as this would be, it also could be hellishly controversial, upsetting the SEO industry and all the fine-tuned ways that online publications get featured in search results. There would almost certainly be legal ramifications. Brace yourselves. 

Product Placement Rewards On YouTube

Advertisers work hard and spend a frightful amount of money trying to grab our attention by paying for carefully constructed advertising campaigns on TV and in the movie theater, both as direct ads and product placements. Now Google's got your back, big brands of the world! New U.S. patent 8180667 is all about "Rewarding creative use of product placements in user-contributed video."

Google points out that hundreds of millions of YouTube clips get uploaded every day. What if you could get paid as an uploader for cleverly including a branded product in your clip? That would encourage you to be creative in making your video, and it would act as a de facto branded advert for an advertising partner (that of course Google would control via its existing paid ad channels). This patent is all about making that process as easy as possible by verifiying that a placed product is indeed featured in a clip automatically, mainly by looking for a branded logo using image processing and pattern recognition techniques. 

And it would add an eerie, potentially sickly use of branded product placements in what we can only guess would be a deluge of YouTube clips trying to earn cash. Nyan Cat wearing Nike sneakers, anyone?

TV Channel Logo Detection On YouTube

Of course YouTube is also host to plenty of content that TV networks would rather not be on there, because they'd rather you pay for a cable or satellite subscription. That's why they plaster their logos into the corners of your favorite shows ... and that's what new patent 8175413 is designed for: Automatically identifying these kinds of proprietary logos on uploaded clips so that a judgment can be made on whether they infringe someone else's IP or not.

Geotagged Voice Recognition

Voice recognition on mobile devices is harder than for desktop machines because of the prevalence of background noise. Now U.S. patent 8175872 demonstrates two things about this: First it shows Google expects voice recognition systems to become pretty ubiquitous, and it suggests a way to use geotagging to remove background noise and thus improve recognition.

The idea's pretty simple: If there are several folk speaking to their mobile devices in an area, chances are they'll all be sampling some of the same background sounds. By geotagging your voice uplink, a cloud server somewhere could use that information to identify background noises and then subtract those signals from everyone's audio feed. Brilliant. Clever. And quite definitely creepy.

Project Glass

We know Google wants to change the world with a revolutionary augmented reality device called Project Glass, and we know what it looks like because we've seen a few in the wild already. Now Google's moved to patent the design of Glass's headset in three different versions: One is the high-tech "headband" version that's been shown already, another is just the frame for that headband without a prominent over-eye projection module, and the final is for a fashion-conscious version that looks more like traditional sunglasses.

Great to see Google's concerned that we all don't look like extras from Star Trek when wearing Glass, but what we really want to see is more data on how the actual things work. Guess we'll have to wait.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

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Watch the cofounder of the e-commerce design site explain how he figured out a way to share his obsession--a breakthrough (and risky) moment that established him as the curator of a wildly successful business.

"People who embrace design, it infiltrates their entire life," says Fab.com cofounder (and Most Creative Person 2012) Bradford Shellhammer. "Once you go there, it's hard to go back."

About This Series

Fast Company profiles the personalities behind the ideas that shake up business as usual. Discover more about these pioneers here.

It's particularly true for his company, which started as a limping social networking site for gays but pivoted into a wildly popular hub for shoppers. Fab grabs them with a meticulously curated array of neat stuff. Before visitors know it, they're design junkies.

Shellhammer shares one trait with other Innovation Agents, however: He and his partner took a giant risk on a big idea, one that meant shuttering a site they had poured their hearts into. "We had a 15-minute board meeting," Shellhammer says, in which they pitched the idea of turning the lights off on their social hub Fabulis and relaunching it as an e-commerce site. "We invest in people, not ideas," his board reassured him. Here's the rest of the story from the person behind big idea of Fab.com.

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If your team spends its days asking for permission before executing, taking an hour to complete expense reports or time sheets, attending redundant meetings, or answering irrelevant emails, you’ve got a problem.

Processes are supposed to help organizations scale up, improve efficiency for new hires and existing employees, and so on--but they can quickly get out of control.

In a study of U.S. and European companies, The Boston Consulting Group found that “over the past fifteen years, the amount of procedures, vertical layers, interface structures, coordination bodies, and decision approvals needed...has increased by anywhere from 50 percent to 350 percent.” What’s more, in the most complicated organizations, “managers spend 40 percent of their time writing reports and 30 percent to 60 percent of it in coordination meetings.” No wonder people feel like they can never get any real work done.

Why do we love process so much? It offers a way to measure progress and productivity, which makes people feel more efficient and accountable. When used correctly, processes should standardize and simplify the necessary tasks that keep business running smoothly. They should enable organizations to undertake complex work, particularly as an organization grows. Expense reporting, for example, should have a process that every single employee follows every single time--that’s just common sense. Smart processes encapsulate bundles of organizational knowledge. And that’s a good thing.

But it’s not a good thing when there are so many processes in place that they restrain the people they’re supposed to help. If your team spends its days asking for permission before executing, taking an hour to complete expense reports or time sheets, attending redundant meetings, or answering irrelevant emails, you’ve got a problem. Exactly when are employees supposed to find the time to innovate when every task or topic is labeled “urgent” and every deadline is ASAP? Something will eventually give, and that something is going to be the part of the job they can keep pushing off until later.

Here are five ways process can kill production: 

Empowering with permission--but without action:It’s not empowering when people are given more responsibility, yet must still obtain an unreasonable number of approvals and sign-offs to get anything done. This signals a lack of trust.Leaders focused on process instead of people: In an effort to standardize and sanitize everything we do, nothing at work is personal anymore. Leaders look to processes, not people, to solve problems--and it doesn’t work. Where’s the inspiration, the vision? This signals a lack of humanity.Overdependence on meetings: “Collaborative” and “inclusive” are corporate buzzwords, but productive teamwork does not require meetings for every single action or decision. People become overwhelmed and ineffective when they are always stuck in meetings. This signals that politics have taken precedence over productivity.Lack of (clear) vision: Great companies need a grand vision and important goals. Too often, companies have vision or mission statements laden with jargon but devoid of meaning. This signals a lack of purpose.Management acts as judge, not jury: If the purpose of a meeting is to think, create, or build, management has to stop tearing people down when they propose new ideas or question the status quo. This signals a lack of perspective and openness.

The Best of FC's Productivity Tips

Get more done with less hassle: --3 Proven Strategies To Keep The Internet From Killing Your Productivity --Hack Your Productivity: A Time-Management Geek's 10-Minute Solution --9 Simple Productivity Tips You Can Do Right Now

Over the years I’ve encountered organizations, large and small, that have essentially allowed process to become their culture. I’ve also seen businesses suffer when they assumed that if a process worked well for one division, it would work well for the company overall. Good processes can turn especially dangerous when they creep from manufacturing lines and finance departments into brainstorms and research labs. Some of the worst offenders have been companies that implemented overarching processes like Six Sigma, a rigidly data-driven quality-management program originally designed to tackle manufacturing problems. Fifty-three percent of the Fortune 500 have deployed it and of the Fortune 100, 82 percent have used it. Despite its manufacturing origins, Six Sigma has been used across many industries and sectors, and proponents claim it saved Fortune 500 corporations nearly a half-trillion dollars since its inception. If so many successful organizations are using it and saving money, what’s the problem, right?

Again, it comes down to priority. When we shift such a huge amount of an organization’s focus onto standardizing everything, other areas inevitably suffer. According to a BusinessWeek article called “Six Sigma: So Yesterday?,” the program ultimately did more harm than good when it was implemented at Home Depot: “Profitability soared, but worker morale dropped, and so did consumer sentiment. Home Depot fell from first to last among major retailers on the American Customer Satisfaction Index in 2005.”

Another oft-cited example of Six Sigma’s negative effects occurred at 3M. When former GE executive James McNerney took the helm in 2001, he instituted a rigorous Six Sigma program, which meant slashing costs, training thousands of employees to become program experts, and requiring extensive reporting on new products in the R&D pipeline. In the short term, especially in the eyes of investors, it seemed to work. Costs were brought under control, production speed increased, and operating margins rose from 17 percent to 23 percent by 2005. But researchers in the labs were stifled by the demands of the new metrics. 3M had a century-long history of innovation, but now R&D had been cut and inventors weren’t given adequate time to tinker with products before having to demonstrate successful commercialization. “We were letting, I think, the process get in the way of doing the actual invention," said Dr. Larry Wendling, staff vice president at 3M's Corporate Research Laboratory. 

After McNerney’s departure for Boeing in 2005--just four years after joining the company--3M began to reevaluate Six Sigma. In addition to the friction it caused among staff, its long-term growth potential appeared compromised and there were concerns that 3M had become “a less creative company...a vitally important issue for a company whose very identity is built on innovation.”

In recent years, 3M has significantly changed the way it uses Six Sigma. The company acknowledges that the program adds value in its factories, so it’s still utilized in manufacturing operations. Researchers working in the labs, however, are no longer beholden to the metrics and rubrics of Six Sigma. The shift has been successful--and there are metrics to prove it. One of the best measures of innovation efforts is the percentage of revenue that a company derives from products introduced in the last five years. At 3M, this number had traditionally hovered around 30 percent, but had dropped to 21 percent after Six Sigma’s introduction. In 2010, the number was back up to 30 percent and may soon surpass 35 percent.

I don’t mean to vilify Six Sigma unfairly. It’s just one example in a long list of top-down processes that people mistake as a silver bullet to improve their entire business. TQM, Lean Six Sigma, ISO, etc.--they all entrench organizations in policies and procedures, minimizing the organization’s innovation potential.

Today, managers are especially in a bind. They’re expected to efficiently produce outstanding short-term results, but the innovation they’re supposed to pursue could very likely hurt their careers. A 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey summarizes the quandary:

“Those in middle management... found innovation disruptive to their day-to-day activities and felt it got in the way of running an efficient operation--which is what they were paid to do.”

When people’s jobs depend on meeting metrics and maintaining the status quo, can you fault them for their reluctance to expend any energy toward creation and invention?

Reprinted by permission of Bilbiomotion. Excerpted from Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution, copyright 2012 Lisa Bodell. All rights reserved.

[Image: Flickr user Deja Photo]

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With sky-high unemployment, Richmond, California, is not a place where traditional business models alone can dent poverty. The city has turned to co-ops in hopes that people who might be unemployable in the traditional economy gain access to both jobs and control over their own labor.

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At the height of the recession, the unemployment rate in Richmond, Calif., topped out at a dismal 19%. That figure has more recently crept down about three points, an improvement that might be worth celebrating if the city didn’t still have so far to go.

City councilman Tom Butt deadpans that Richmond, a city of about 100,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area just north of Oakland, is a place with “more than the usual number of socioeconomic challenges.” A large share of the immigrant population doesn’t speak English. Crime is high--Richmond is regularly ranked among the most dangerous cities in the country--meaning local residents who’ve gone through the criminal justice system have even rougher odds of landing a job. This is not, in other words, a place where traditional business models alone can dent poverty.

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“There’s not a lot of help coming from the federal government, or the state government,” says the city’s Green Party mayor, Gayle McLaughlin. “So we’re kind of on our own.” Two years ago, she went all the way to Spain in search of another economic model that might reinvigorate her city, once the locus of bustling shipyards that produced hundreds of boats for battle during World War II.

The Basque Country in Spain is home to the world’s most famous worker-owned co-op, the Mondragon Corporation, based in the town of Mondragon. The 55-year-old corporation includes some 250 smaller co-ops, with more than 80,000 employees, the vast majority of them members and owners themselves. Mondragon is today the seventh largest company in Spain, with its fingers in finance, retail, and manufacturing, and it has become a kind of Mecca for far-flung groups eager to learn how to create their own co-op businesses.

Richmond has what is perhaps the only official municipal co-op consultant in the country.

“I found that the values of people in Mondragon were very much in line with the values that we were putting forward as part of our political movement in Richmond: standing for equity, standing for justice, standing for community empowerment,” McLaughlin says. And so she brought the idea back to California and hired what is probably the only official municipal worker co-op consultant in the country. As of January, the first co-op born from this campaign, the aptly named Liberty Ship Café, is up and running, with plans for new bike shop, bakery, urban agriculture, and solar installation co-ops on the way.

“I’m working and dreaming and putting my efforts behind the dream of having Richmond become the national capital of worker co-ops,” McLaughlin says. “I really believe we can be that. We have the need, and that’s one thing they told us in Mondragon.” The first and most important thing anyone needs to make this work, the folks in Mondragon said, is need itself. And that is the one thing Richmond has in spades.

It’s the kind of thing that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would probably sneer at. But at the end of the day, it’s just a business model.

To outsiders, all of this might sound like some pretty hippie stuff. You may be more familiar with the concept of a co-op if you’ve been chuckling at the Humus Wars at the Park Slope Food Co-op, or if you know anyone who grew up “out at the co-op,” the universal shorthand for '60s-era communes on the outskirts of some progressive towns. But co-op businesses are still a form of capitalism. The people who work in and own them still want to turn a profit. In this model, however, there is no gulf between the lowly employee and the business partner. All decisions are made communally. And by starting their own businesses, people who might not be employable in the traditional economy gain access to both jobs and control over their own labor. The idea is a good fit for communities dense with immigrants--the beauty of co-ops is that anyone can start them--although Richmond isn’t limiting its efforts only to its immigrant population.

“It’s the kind of thing for example that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would probably sneer at,” Butt says. “But at the end of the day, it’s just a business model, and business is business. And whatever you can do to create economic activity and create jobs, it’s all business. It just shows there’s more than one way to do it.”

In January, the Liberty Ship Café launched in a booth at the local farmer’s market, with the help of the California Center for Cooperative Development, which is also working with the city to fulfill McLaughlin’s vision. The café today has just three worker-owners, immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico, and it does not yet provide a full-time job for any of them. Every Friday, they sell healthy sandwiches, salads, and empanadas at the farmer’s market, and the business is expanding into lunchtime catering around town. Richmond has a long way to go from this one fledgling co-op to a community that will be transformed by the idea in the way that Mondragon has been over decades.

But already the Liberty Ship Café has begun to put a tangible face on all the talk around town about co-ops. “The whole worker-owned co-op thing, it’s most beneficial for the people directly in the co-op, but there’s a trickle-out effect, and we want to talk to people about that,” says Lexi Hudson, a co-op specialist with the California Center for Cooperative Development who has been working with the café. “When one person in the community feels empowered to own their own business and make their own decisions, they’re absolutely going to be affecting everybody else in the community.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #USInnovation.

[Image: Liberty Ship Café]

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West Coast business schools are entrepreneurial breeding grounds, but not just for the next hot thing in tech--here's what mix-and-match watch company Modify learned during its launch.

I graduated from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business in May 2010. Friends from school included the founders of ideation space Napkin Labs; an amazing online test preparation company called Magoosh; and an industry-changing waste-heat-to-electricity clean tech startup called Alphabet Energy. While at Haas, I interacted with entrepreneurs and investors while cofounding a gamified sustainability startup--it was the tech maven's dream!

However, rather than going the tech route, I decided to start a watch company after graduation.

I started Modify Watches with a friend, Gary Coover. Together, we design and manufacture interchangeable faces and straps that can be mixed and matched for the ultimate personalized watch. Our products are sold in the Google Store and have been customized for HP, AOL, and others. We will soon launch a line featuring the images of Major League Baseball players.

Despite the low-tech nature of our watches, interacting with techies has had an immeasurable impact on our success. Here are three key takeaways that can apply to startups in any industry--not just Silicon Valley's hottest tech companies:

Test your hypotheses: Gary and I thought that Modify was ideally targeted for young professionals. When we first started, people of all demographics would stop us on the street and say, "Cool watch, where'd you get it?" Taking a note from the playbook of famed entrepreneurs and investors Steve Blank and Eric Ries--our professors at Haas--we reassessed our strategy, focusing on customer discovery and building a minimum viable product. We talked to customers without making more assumptions and instead focused on getting out of the office and testing our hypotheses. Do not create the product of your dreams from the start--you may find that after six months of work and a $50,000 investment, your ideal product does not match a customer’s ideal product. Admit that you don't know what you don't know and find great advisers who do: Before business school, I was a management consultant. Before consulting, I studied history and Hispanic studies at Columbia. I had no direct experience in the fields we operate in now. We brought on advisers who were experts in design, watch manufacturing, and web and retail development. Their advice saved our team countless amounts of money, time, and stress. When we ran into walls, we always sought their advice. Being closed off to the world is a big fallacy--startups too often think that someone might steal their big-ticket idea. The truth is that the deck is stacked against an entrepreneur succeeding, so it's important to become a great listener. Co-create products with your community: After building a strong community, the best tech businesses do a great job of engaging their fans to make sure that all of their product features are useful. Modify's Facebook fans literally told us what features to build into our watches. Not too many people cared about adding a calendar feature to the watch, but everyone asked for a watch that was water-resistant. Thanks to our community, your Modify can go swimming. Before we produce any watch, we poll our community to figure out what patterns and colors they prefer.

There are many more great strategies to observe from other companies of all sizes and from all industries. Look for organizations that are doing analogous work and figure out how you can take their best practices and translate them to your business.

Aaron Schwartz is founder and CEO of Modify Industries, Inc., which designs interchangeable, custom Modify Watches. He loves working on startup ideas and has spent innumerable (happy) hours advising friends and former students on how to grow their ideas.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.

[Image: Modify Watches]

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Larry Page recently called Google+ the company's "social spine." If that's the case, then Google's backbone might be much weaker than Page has been letting on, at least according to a new report from RJ Metrics.

This week, the data analytics firm provided Fast Company with exclusive new insights on Google+. The findings paint a very poor picture of the search giant's social network--a picture of waning interest, weak user engagement, and minimal social activity. Google calls the study flawed--we'll explain why in a second--and has boasted that more than 170 million people have "upgraded" to the network. RJ Metrics' report, on the other hand, is yet another indicator that Google+ might indeed just be a "virtual ghost town," as some have argued.

Let's start with the findings. For its study, RJ Metrics (RJM) selected a sample of 40,000 random Google+ users. RJM then downloaded and analyzed every sample users' public timeline, which contains all publicly available activity. One important caveat: RJM was only able to look at public data, which as it points out, "is not necessarily reflective of the entire population of users," since some users are private or at least have private activity. That said, the stats are eye-opening:

According to RJM's report, the average post on Google+ has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-shareRoughly 30% of users who make a public post never make a second oneEven after making five public posts, there is a 15% chance that a user will not post publicly againAmong users who make publicly viewable posts, there is an average of 12 days between each postAfter a member makes a public post, the average number of public posts they make in each subsequent month declines steadily, a trend that is not improving

In a statement provided to Fast Company, a Google spokesperson challenged the claims made in RJM's report. "By only tracking engagement on public posts, this study is flawed and not an accurate representation of all the sharing and activity taking place on Google+," the spokesperson said. "As we've said before, more sharing occurs privately to circles and individuals than publicly on Google+. The beauty of Google+ is that it allows you to share privately--you don't have to publicly share your thoughts, photos or videos with the world."

In its report, RJM acknowledged that it only provided insight into "public-facing actions of Google+ users." Still, in many instances, RJM said it was "quite surprised" by the low levels of engagement on public Google+ postings. For example, RJM said it was "shocked at the high average time between public posts among users." On average, a user waits 15 days between making his or her first and second public post. That figure improves with each subsequent post, but only slightly: There is an average of 10 days between a user's fifth and sixth public post.

"Remember that since we are only looking at public posts, it is very possible that users are making non-public posts between the ones that we were able to see," RJM's report indicates. "Despite this, however, we were still quite surprised by the large amount of time between public posts."

Of all the areas RJM studied, it felt social sharing was the one category that was "the least likely to be biased by the fact that we only studied public posts. These public posts will still be visible to each member's private networks, and actually could attract +1's, shares, and replies from external users as well. If anything, we would expect our numbers here to be higher than in the general population."

However, in its analysis of almost 70,000 posts, RJM found:

An average of 0.77 +1's per postAn average of 0.54 replies per postAn average of 0.17 re-shares per post

These low engagement levels do appear to match up with a recent study by ComScore. In February, it was reported that, according to ComScore, non-mobile visitors to Google+ spent an average of roughly three minutes on the network per month, between the months of September and January, compared with nearly seven hours per month on rival Facebook during the same timeframe.

Even with users who have engaged with Google+ on multiple occasions, there are signs that the network never becomes quite addictive. "Once a user has made one public post, the chances that they will make a second post are quite strong: around 70%," RJM's report says. "After that, however, Google+ does not perform as well as we were expecting. In charts like these we typically expect to see the probability of repeat posts shoot up to well north of 90% by the time the user has made several posts."

"This is basically the 'once you're using it you're hooked' principle. With Google+, however, this number never crosses the 90% mark. Even after having made five such posts, the chance of making a sixth is only 85%. This means that 15% of people who have made five posts never came back to make a sixth."

On the other hand, it could also mean that the more a user engages with Google+, the more likely he or she is to engage with Circles, which would yield more private activity.

The same, arguably, could be said of waning engagement on Google+. RJM did a cohort analysis that highlights the rate of public postings throughout time. "This is a cumulative chart, so we're basically showing the 'average number of total posts made' as it grows over time for users in each cohort," RJM's report said.

"The decay rate here is very concerning," the report continued. "Users are less and less likely to make additional posts, even a few months after initially joining."

Part of the reason there have been so many reports on the so-called Google+ "ghost town" is because Google has refused to provide clear figures and metrics for its social network's active user base. The company has said there are 170 million people who have "upgraded" to Google+, which is just a confusing way to say that 170 million people have signed up for the service (which takes about a click or two if you are already a Gmail user).

The company has been asked repeatedly for monthly active users, and it's repeatedly denied such requests, essentially calling them irrelevant. The closest we've seen of active usership was when the company explained how many Google+ users were engaging with Google Plus-enhanced or -related products. The problem is that Google Plus-enhanced products include YouTube and Google.com, meaning if you are engaging with basically any Google property (there are 120 Google+ integrations thus far) while signed up with Google+, Google is basically counting this as engagement with Google+, which is incredibly misleading, as some have argued. 

Google has continuously fudged its numbers and dodged specifics around Google+, as search guru Danny Sullivan has recorded in his brilliant rundown of Google's lack of transparency on the subject. To confuse things all the more, Larry Page recently said in an earnings call that "there are 2 parts to the Google+ experience: the part that is the social spine, and the other part that's the social destination part of Google+ exclusively. Both of these are growing fast, but the social destination part of Google+ is growing as a new product with very healthy growth."

There's a simple way to solve this problem: Just provide the number of active monthly users on Google+ (proper). Facebook does it. Google even does it with YouTube, which, as Larry Page boasted recently, has 800 million monthly users. But when I made a request for such figures, Google did not provide them.

This is why the press is increasingly turning to third parties, such as ComScore and RJ Metrics, to learn more about Google+ usage. "Google is just refusing to answer the question for its own reasons," Danny Sullivan wrote, "which is probably because Google+ has far less activity as a standalone social network than either Facebook or Twitter."

Or as RJM's report put it, "At the end of the day, Google+ simply does not show the same level of ravenous user adoption and engagement that we've seen in other social networks."

[Image: Flickr user Snap Man]

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