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Personal transportation company Segway, Inc. has announced a major recall of two of its scooters after dozens of reports that a critical component of the scooters could fail, leading to the injury of the rider—or possibly even death. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On March 20, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published a recall notice on its website announcing that Segway has initiated a recall of its popular Segway Ninebot kickscooters. The recall was initiated after the company received reports that a component in the scooters could fail, leading to the risk of a fall hazard for the rider, which could result in serious injury or even death. The faulty component is the folding mechanism on the scooters, which could fail and cause it to fold while in use. Segway says that about 220,000 units of scooters are being recalled in total. What Segway scooters are being recalled? According to the CPSC notice, the following Segway scooters are being recalled: Segway Ninebot Max G30P KickScooter Segway Ninebot Max G30LP KickScooter Segway says the Max G30LP is gray with yellow accents, and the Max G30P is black with yellow accents. The brand name “ninebot” can be found on the handlebars and on the foot of both scooters, while the model number can be found on the side of the foot deck. You can find images of the recalled scooters here. Has anyone been injured? Unfortunately, yes. According to the CSPC notice, Segway has received 68 reports of the folding mechanism failing. Out of those incidents, 20 people have reportedly been injured. Injuries include broken bones, lacerations, abrasions, and bruises. But those aren’t the only possible consequences. On the recall page on its website, Segway notes that if the mechanism folds while the scooter is in use, “serious bodily injury or death” may occur. Where were the recalled scooters sold? The recalled scooters in question were sold from January 2020 through February 2025 for a retail price of between $600 and $1,000. The scooters were sold nationwide both at online retail locations and in physical retail stores. Those retailers include: Best Buy Costco Walmart Target Sam’s Club The scooters were also sold on Amazon.com and Segway.com. What should I do if I have a recalled scooter? Immediately stop using it, says the notice on the CSPC’s website. Owners can then use this online tool on Segway’s website to determine if their scooter is affected by the recall. If it is, owners of the scooters will be eligible to request and receive one self-maintenance kit that will allow them to adjust and tighten the folding mechanism. Full details of the recall can be found here. View the full article

Results come after Tesla’s EV rival announces five-minute charging systemView the full article

This week's trip into the minds of people who aren't old enough to rent a car is like a potpourri of unrelated trends and memes that present a picture of the variety of ways young people are relating to the world. Some TikTokers are memorializing peak moments in their lives with a "Hozier yell," while others are spending their precious time on Earth creating brain-rot "juggtok" videos, or getting really, really angry about chess and chubbiness. It's a big world. What is a Hozier yell?A "Hozier yell" is used in TikTok videos to refer to a peak, climactic, awe-inspiring moment. Literary types might substitute "barbaric yamp." The end result is videos like these: The reference and the audio that goes with it is to the song "Northern Attitude," a 2024 collab between Hozier and Noah Kahan, in which Hozier hits a particularly climactic note just as the song climaxes. Hozier, by the way, is an Irish singer-songwriter whose songs are heavily influenced by folk music who is best known for his 2013 song "Take Me to Church." So far, nearly 200,000 videos have used the audio clip of Hozier and Kahan, commenting on everything from seeing a bear to marriage proposals to graduating cosmetology school. What does “Jugg” mean? And what is "Juggtok?"The slang term “jugg” (sometime “juug”) means to grab quickly or to steal. Like most modern slang, it is derived from AAVE, specifically from the South. "Jugg" has been around for awhile—the word is used in a number of rap songs from the 2010s—but it has come into wider usage lately as part of a TikTok meme format called "juggtok," a convoluted brain-rot-centric subculture in which specific slang words and acronyms are paired with a set of unrelated images and video clips in such a way as to render it all meaningless. If my reading is correct, juggtok and its offshoots and adversaries like slimetok and jollytok defy explanation on purpose. They are meant to be meaningless and self-referential. Here are a couple examples: (For more definitions, check out my slang glossary, 'Aura Farming,' 'Huzz,' and Other Gen Z and Gen Alpha Slang You Might Need Help Decoding.) Chubby filter causing TikTok controversyThe cultural argument over "fat acceptance" has been going on for a long time, but artificial intelligence is adding an exciting new wrinkle. This month, a video filter called "Chubby AI" allowed Tiktokers to visualize what it would look like if they (gasp!) gained weight, and videos like these started going viral: There was, as you'd probably expect, an instant backlash, as illustrated by this X post from writer Bec Shaw: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. If you had hope that younger people might be more accepting of people being overweight, since so many of them are, you'd be mistaken. But on the plus side, I'm confident that many skinny young people who look down on fat people will eventually grow fat themselves. Is chess.com trying to rename the bishop?Since we're doing controversy, a way dumber foofaraw was kicked off last week by chess.com that proves how everyone must pick a side of the culture wars, even websites about chess. The row began when chess.com's X account posted this seemingly innocuous piece of engagement-bait: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Apparently some X users assumed that Chess.com wants to rename the diagonally moving piece because of religious connotation of the name "bishop," so the comments section quickly filled with responses like this, from a " friendly neighborhood Christian Nationalist:" This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. And this, from some other goof: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. And this, from a normal person having a very normal day: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Anyway, chess.com ensured more outrage by troll-posting: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. So is chess.com really trying to bring down Christianity? Sadly, no. They'd made a similar post earlier about The Rook: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. And no one freaked out. The seething outrage over a meaningless shitpost illustrates that X is worst website ever and no one should use it. I feel like I need a shower after even a few minutes there. Viral videos of the the week: Can You Fool A Self Driving Car? As the great Criswell intones in Plan 9 From Outer Space, the future is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives; no doubt a lot of that time will be spent driving, and driving will be very different in the future. Cutting-edge technology is rapidly taking over driver's decisions, whether it's emergency braking or full-on auto-driving so I can take a nap and go to Hardees. Computer-assisted driving is generally a good idea, but the technology has limits, and the future holds auto-related dangers that Henry Ford never dreamed of. For instance, how would an auto-driving car handle a brick wall painted to look like the road? That's the question at the center of this week's viral video of the week, in which YouTube legend Mark Rober pits the two leading self-driving car technologies against obstacles like thick fog, heavy rain, and a wall painted to look like the road. Rober's experiments features a car from Luminar with a self-driving system that uses a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to navigate, and a Tesla that uses cameras. Rober's tests are unscientific—this is an entertainment YouTube channel after all—but they are, as Elon Musk might post, "concerning." Few drivers will ever encounter a brick wall painted like the road (unless they're driving through a Warner Brothers cartoon) but whether a car on auto-pilot will brake for an obstacle in a heavy fog seems pretty relevant. And the results don't look promising for the Tesla. View the full article

Marketing stunts tend to range from the banal to the broadly clever—but rarely do they border on the chaotically brilliant. Today, the beverage company Evolution Fresh is debuting a 10-gallon hat designed to smuggle 12-ounce cans of its new Real Fruit Soda (or really any beverage of your choosing) into movie theaters and concert venues where BYO is verboten. And you know what? Contrary to most gimmicks, it’s a delightfully offbeat and utilitarian flex that underscores the heart of its product. [Photo: Evolution Fresh] Evolution Fresh released the line last June, and the better-for-you soda category has only boomed in the months since, with Coke unveiling Simply Pop and Pepsi buying Poppi for nearly $2 billion. Molly White, CMO of Generous Brands (Evolution Fresh’s parent company), wrote in an email exchange that Real Fruit Soda is currently the No. 2 refrigerated alt-soda brand next to category leader Olipop, with some 3.6 million cans sold and a presence in 11,000 stores. Now, Evolution Fresh’s smuggling campaign is seeking to Trojan Horse its product into all those other places synonymous with traditional soda. “Today’s consumers want that fizzy, refreshing hit without the artificial ingredients and sugar overload,” White wrote. “Movie theaters, in particular, felt like the perfect battleground, where consumers often feel forced to choose between nostalgia and nutrition. Our solution? A playful act of defiance.” Partnering with BSSP on the campaign, Evolution Fresh explored a variety of smuggling vessels before settling on the cowboy hat—which, White notes, dovetails with the recent surge in Western wear. The hats hail from Two Roads, and a prop company designed a custom-fit foam compartment to stash a can securely into the top of them. They cost only $5 each and will be available while supplies last right here—but don’t let the marketing price point make you think they’re ephemeral landfill-filling dross, as these things tend to be. Rather, White detailed that the hats are made from 100% Australian wool, and the $5 price is a nod to the soda’s low sugar content of five grams. Can I pull off a cowboy hat? Probably not. Can I attempt to in order to smuggle a more affordable beer into a concert? For $5, it’s time to saddle up and find out. View the full article

DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The once high-flying San Francisco company—which provides DNA analysis to offer insights into ancestry, health traits, and genetic risks—is aiming to sell itself after facing significant challenges, including rejected acquisition offers and declining market value in the wake of a 2023 data breach that impacted millions of users. In addition, CEO Anne Wojcicki has stepped down, and CFO Joe Selsavage will serve as interim CEO during the restructuring process, 23andMe said on Sunday. The company plans to continue operating as it seeks a buyer. The bankruptcy filing punctuates a stunning downfall for what was once one of Silicon Valley’s buzziest companies. It follows a long series of setbacks for 23andMe, including mass layoffs and restructuring efforts. Last year, 23andMe reduced its workforce by nearly 40%, a move that was part of an effort to cut operating costs and pivot the company’s focus. 23andMe has also faced mounting financial losses, with its valuation dropping dramatically since its 2021 IPO. Shares of 23andMe (NASDAQ: ME) were down 43% in premarket trading on Monday following the bankruptcy news, bringing them down to penny stock territory. The company’s financial turmoil is compounded by an industry-wide decline in demand for at-home DNA testing, as well as ongoing concerns about privacy and data security, all of which were made worse by the 2023 breach. An urgent warning for customers On Friday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta urged customers to consider requesting that 23andMe delete their data and destroy any biological samples, and issued a consumer alert regarding 23andMe’s financial distress and the potential risks to customer data. “California has robust privacy laws that allow consumers to take control and request that a company delete their genetic data,” said Bonta. “Given 23andMe’s reported financial distress, I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company.” Reached for comment about Bonta’s statement, 23andMe referred Fast Company to its open letter to customers, in which it insists customer data is safe. The company says the bankruptcy process will have no impact on how it stores, manages, or protects data. “[We] are committed to continuing to safeguard customer data and being transparent about the management of user data going forward, and data privacy will be an important consideration in any potential transaction,” said Mark Jensen, chair of the board of directors, in statement. View the full article

Wage growth has outstripped property price rises, official figures show View the full article

Our workplaces are undergoing the next technological revolution, brought on by the warp-speed growth of artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI is a total game changer for how we work. One day, we’ll look back and wonder how we did our jobs without this technology. But not today. Many of us are still living firmly in the discovery period of AI at work, and we’re dealing with a big dichotomy. Employees are incredibly curious about how to use AI to make their jobs easier and accelerate their growth, but very few people feel like they know how to do that. The results of a recent Wiley survey of around 2,000 individuals across a range of job roles and industries make this clear. The large majority—76%—of our respondents reported that they lack confidence in how to use AI at work. A recent Gallup survey reported similar findings, with only 6% of employees saying they feel very comfortable using AI in their roles, while about one-third say they feel very uncomfortable. Employees are stressed out about AI This transition is stressful; virtually all (96%) of those Wiley surveyed said they are experiencing some degree of stress about change at work. More than half reported at least moderate levels of anxiety as they navigate the complexities of AI adoption. This is completely natural for a change of this magnitude. Applications of AI generate emotions around job security and a general fear of this new unknown. Employees will often turn to their supervisor for guidance during times of change at work. But while the majority of respondents in our survey said that their manager is supportive of their efforts to integrate AI, only 34% of managers themselves reported feeling equipped when it comes to incorporating AI at work. This ends up causing more stress and worry for both managers and employees as a result. Getting past emotional barriers AI isn’t going anywhere. To be successful at work, we all need to get past emotional barriers and embrace AI. And it’s not merely just about staying current with industry trends. It’s about making jobs easier so that companies can compete in their industry and colleagues can accelerate their careers. Failure to drive access and adoption of AI technology can easily cause companies to lose their competitive edge in the marketplace. Your first priority should be to get everyone to adopt AI in their day-to-day work. In practice, this likely means increasing the availability of tools. Employees can’t use AI if they don’t have it readily available. But the successful adoption of AI hinges on more than just access—employees need to know how to use these tools and do so responsibly, with guardrails for their respective roles. Investing in upskilling is crucial in navigating this transition. This requires organizations to take a multifaceted approach that encompasses training, support, communication, and transparency. When people understand both what they are doing and why they’re doing it, they’re more likely to embrace change. Help employees feel comfortable using AI According to our survey, companies can help their employees feel comfortable in using this technology by providing them with three things: Clear expectations around the usage of AI—Employees need to have clear expectations to guide their AI usage given the risks involved. This might require many different steps to manage that risk based on what’s best for your organization. One way you can do this is by laying out a risk controls framework that is right-sized for your organization. It’s also important for company leaders to model the way and advocate for usage among employees. A clear understanding of organizational strategy—Making an explicit statement about the role AI plays in your organization’s strategy can also go a long way. Consider gathering a group of internal subject matter experts—whether that be business, technology, legal, and communications experts—to drive strategy and develop standards for your organization’s ethical and responsible use of AI. Training on ways to integrate AI—Once employees are comfortable with the tool, you need to train them to actually use the tool. Manager training and adoption are essential elements since so many people will turn to their direct supervisors for help. This group is extremely crucial in providing motivation and encouragement to their teams. Is AI going to create a once-in-a-generation transformation in the workplace? Probably. Is it overwhelming to a lot of people? Definitely. But if we let ourselves, our teams, and our organizations stay overwhelmed, we’ll never realize all the potential that AI has to offer. View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Before there was Apple, Medtronic, or Tesla, there was General Electric (GE). Created in 1892 from the combination of Thomas Edison’s Edison General Electric and two other competitors, the American conglomerate was once the most powerful, valuable, and inventive company in the world. “At different times during its 130-year run, [GE] had been a leader in technological innovation and entrepreneurial drive,” writes Puck cofounder William D. Cohan in his 2022 book Power Failure. “The generation and distribution of electricity? GE. The light bulb? GE. The jet engine? GE. The X-ray machine? GE. The world’s first radio broadcast? GE. The first home television sets? GE. The first electric cars? GE.” Cohan’s book goes on to detail the management missteps—many related to its GE Capital financial services business—that ultimately led the once mighty company to split into three public companies specializing in aviation, healthcare, and energy. The power behind the name Scott Strazik, CEO of energy spinoff GE Vernova, says he is trying to lead the company by adopting some of the best parts of the GE legacy—its ambition and some its best talent—while embracing the freedoms of being a standalone company. “We were very thoughtful about the fact that we needed to have an entrepreneurial edge to everything that we did,” he says. That edginess starts with the company’s name: Vernova marries “ver” (short for verdant, or green) with “nova,” from the Latin word novus, or new. In contrast, the other GE spinoffs, GE HealthCare and GE Aerospace, selected more straightforward names based on the industries they serve. “We wanted to choose a name that very clearly said to all of our stakeholders that the world is changing, and we needed to change with it,” Strazik says. One of those stakeholder groups is the community of cleantech and energy transition startups, and Strazik is trying to forge partnerships with them. Last year, GE Vernova launched a joint venture with Montana Technologies, the maker of a system that harvests water from the atmosphere, and it invested in Form Energy, which develops energy storage solutions. “The greatest value we add for [Form Energy CEO] Mateo Jaramillo isn’t going to be the money we invest,” Strazik says. “It can be the supply-chain team I had at his factory in West Virginia last week or the commercial leader that’s meeting with his commercial team this week to help them understand contracting with a different type of customer than they’re used to.” Leading power’s next gen Strazik says GE Vernova can help other companies in the energy ecosystem better understand how to build products at scale and how to reach customers effectively—two muscles it built as part of the GE empire. But even the vaunted “synergies” of being part of a conglomerate, such as the ability to share technology or best practices, couldn’t always be optimized given that the divisions had such different customers. And Strazik says that as an independent company he no longer has to compete with other huge divisions for capital. GE Vernova sits at the intersection of two big trends—the demand for more electricity globally, much of it coming from AI data centers—and the need to diversify and clean up the way energy is produced. GE Vernova’s business includes power (gas, hydro, nuclear), wind (onshore and offshore), and software and systems, which include grid storage and power conversion. “We go into that discussion with a responsibility because 25% of the world’s electricity today is powered with our equipment,” Strazik says. “What’s becoming more pronounced and clear to the world at large is this is going be a game in which all [of the assets in our portfolio] are going to be needed for us to win.” By one measure, Strazik’s effort to recapture the prowess of GE in its heyday is off to a solid start—the company’s stock is up about 150% from its first day of trading nearly a year ago, and in that time, it has outperformed the market and siblings GE Healthcare and GE Aerospace. But as GE Vernova approaches its first anniversary, Strazik seems to believe there’s even more the company can do to recapture the entrepreneurial spirit of its former parent. “I want to look at different partnering models that we can pursue to provide leverage to Vernova and our shareholders,” he says. “We’re progressing, but I have such ambition for the role Vernova can play in the energy ecosystem that we’re going to ramp up expectations even further in year two.” How does your team keep entrepreneurial spirit alive? How has your company worked to retain the entrepreneurial or innovative zeal of your founders or its legacy? Send your responses to me at stephaniemehta@gmail.com. I’d love to publish your best answers. Read more: GE, then and now 3 leadership lessons from General Electric’s breakup The complicated business legacy of Jack Welch What’s really holding back renewable energy View the full article

Recruiting veterans urge originators to track their future employer's pricing for a longer period of time, and to seek more details about the firm's culture. View the full article

The name Village Roadshow might not ring a bell with every moviegoer, but the company’s logo almost certainly will. Its shimmering, nested “V” of metallic ribbons that taper inward like a cinematic illusion played before dozens of movies that collectively spawned 34 No. 1 opening weekends, 19 Academy Awards, and $19 billion in worldwide box office gross. The veteran production house behind seismic hits like The Matrix, Ocean’s 11, and Mad Max: Fury Road has been delivering hits for decades, mostly through coproductions with Warner Bros. But last week, following a years-long decline in box office performance, the company filed for bankruptcy. How did a highly pedigreed cinematic powerhouse—the same force behind some of this century’s biggest films—end up in Chapter 11? It’s a complicated answer, one that—like several other recent corporate downfalls—is rooted in the COVID-19 pandemic. From the drive-in to ‘The Joker’ Village Roadshow started in Australia in 1954 as a drive-in theater operation. Over the next few decades, it extended its tentacles into regular theater business and home video, before launching a film production shingle: Village Roadshow Pictures. True to the company’s Australian roots, its first-ever movie, 1989’s The Delinquents, was set in the Outback and starred a young Kylie Minogue. A few years later, the 1992 sci-fi flick Fortress delivered the company’s first hit, but Village Roadshow became a true force in 1997, when it entered into a co-financing and distribution partnership with Warner Bros. It didn’t take long for the Village Roadshow-Warner Bros. partnership to find explosive success. In 1999 alone, the team-up yielded several major, genre-spanning hits, including Sopranos-adjacent mob comedy Analyze This, schlocky shark horror Deep Blue Sea, and director David O. Russell’s breakthrough, Three Kings, and the culture-shifting sci-fi epic The Matrix. Though the initial partnership deal outlined a plan for making 20 features together over a five-year period, Village Roadshow ultimately ended up collaborating with Warner Bros. on 91 of 108 total movies over the decades that followed, according to its bankruptcy filing. The company’s hitmaking era continued all the way through to 2019’s billion-plus grossing Joker. It was around that time, though, that Village Roadshow made a decision that would factor heavily into its undoing: embarking on a mission to release more projects independently. “From 2018 to 2020, following a shift in the Company’s equity-holders and change in management, the Company expanded its business model and dedicated a meaningful portion of its resources to creating the Studio Business,” the bankruptcy filing details. Village Roadshow’s pivot to a “full service shop” for developing new projects meant taking on more staff, forging more partnerships, and spending more capital on various deals. It would take years to realize they had bitten off more than they could chew. A ‘Matrix’-sized dispute Village Roadshow’s foray into studio business reportedly put into development 99 feature films, 67 unscripted TV shows, and 166 scripted TV shows. This flurry of content creation didn’t bear much fruit, though. Only six of those films ended up going into production—the most prominent of which may be Yassir Lester’s little-seen bowling comedy The Gutter—alongside five unscripted series and two scripted ones. As the filing details, Village Roadshow spent approximately $47.5 million on these efforts, none of which has yet to return a meaningful profit. The company might have been able to offset those costs with revenue from more Warner Bros co-productions—had that partnership not ruptured spectacularly in the early days of the pandemic. The Matrix Resurrections, the franchise’s feverishly anticipated fourth installment, was originally scheduled to debut in theaters back in May 2021. But with the box office still sluggish and the COVID-19 vaccines just starting to roll out, Warner Bros. delayed the would-be blockbuster’s release to April 2022, when it stood a better chance of performing well. That date was later shuffled again, though, this time as part of Warner Bros’s controversial strategy to release its entire 2021 slate of heavyweight titles like Dune and Godzilla vs. Kong on HBO Max the same day they hit theaters. The December 2021 release date for Matrix Resurrections ensured it would be part of that home viewing experiment. While the lukewarm reviews likely didn’t help, the film’s immediate streaming availability likely contributed to its disappointing $157 million worldwide gross—roughly a third of what the original Matrix earned 22 years earlier. Since Village Roadshow’s deal relied on theatrical revenue for its earnings from the movie, the company sued Warner Bros in 2022, alleging it had shoehorned Resurrections into its 2021 release slate in order to “create a desperately needed wave of year-end HBO Max premium subscriptions.” The two companies have spent the years since entangled in ugly, costly arbitration. According to the bankruptcy filing, Village Roadshow has already incurred $18 million in legal fees, “nearly all of which remains unpaid.” As the legal costs piled up and the projects Village Roadshow developed under its own banner devoured more cash, there were (understandably) no splashy new Warner Bros collaborations in the hopper to keep the ship afloat. “Even if the WB Arbitration is resolved, the Company believes that it has irreparably decimated the working relationship between WB and the Company, which has been the most lucrative nexus for the Company’s historic success in the entertainment industry,” reads the filing. (Neither Village Roadshow nor Warner Bros. responded to Fast Company’s request for comment.) During the first half of 2024, Village Roadshow Pictures entered a wave of layoffs that saw its staff downsize from 45 employees to nine. That same year, the company brought in Goldman Sachs to explore the possibility of a sale that might preserve its production arm. But the dark cloud of an ongoing arbitration ultimately made such a sale impossible. The best option, Village Roadshow concluded, was selling off its library assets—the filing mentions an unnamed bidder offering $365 million for them—and selling its derivative rights separately. In the end, Village Roadshow decided that declaring bankruptcy would lead to a sale that maximized its assets. For a production company with such an illustrious history, it’s not exactly a Hollywood ending. View the full article

When brands like Patagonia or Eileen Fisher sell pre-owned products, they highlight how the pieces are in very good condition. That is not Rimowa’s strategy. Tomorrow, the German luxury brand is dropping a collection of vintage suitcases on its U.S. website that are covered in dents and scratches, old stickers, and luggage tags. And the wild thing is there is enormous demand for these beat-up suitcases, which cost between $600 and $1,000, generally around half the price of a brand-new Rimowa case. When the brand did similar limited-edition vintage drops in Germany, South Korea, and Japan, they sold out within minutes or hours. Over the last five years, as the fashion industry has tried to become more sustainable, many brands have started buying back old products and re-selling them to their customers. Rimowa is now following suit with a program called Re-Crafted. [Photo: Rimowa] Emilie De Vitis, Rimowa’s VP of product and marketing, says the company launched the program quietly, since it wasn’t sure how customers would react. In stores, the brand said it would buy back any authentic Rimowa suitcase for $300, no matter what condition it was in. It would then send them to one of its repair shops to be refurbished to ensure that they are as functional and reliable as a new one. “Some of them were so interesting that we saved them for our own archive,” says De Vitis. “But we also had dozens of suitcases that were in excellent condition.” Rimowa then sold these vintage suitcases online in various markets. And to the surprise of De Vitis, they often sold out within minutes. [Photo: Rimowa] Rimowa is very deliberately choosing to not spruce up the exterior of the suitcase or make cosmetic fixes to make the suitcase more attractive. For years, the brand has made the argument that the wear and tear on this luggage should be treated as a badge of honor, a sign of a well-traveled life. Two years ago, it launched a brand campaign called “A Lifetime of Memories,” which celebrated the dents, scratches, and stickers that customers acquire on their suitcases as they see the world. At it’s retrospective museum exhibit to celebrate its 125th anniversary, it displayed the well-worn suitcases of celebrities like Patti Smith to Roger Federer to Spike Lee. [Photo: Rimowa] The message seems to have sunk in. There’s a whole community of Rimowa fans who are looking for vintage suitcases. Some are specifically looking for older models that aren’t manufactured anymore, such as those that have only two wheels rather than four. Some love to see a unique assortment of stickers from the previous owners’ extensive travels. It’s like buying a piece of history. “Some people like to buy these vintage pieces because they come across as connoisseurs, who have known the brand for a long time,” De Vitis says. [Photo: Rimowa] Rimowa’s approach flies in the face of the modern fashion industry, which is obsessed with newness. Fast fashion brands creates cheap, disposable clothes so that customers can buy the latest looks and throw them away before a new trend pops up. This overconsumption is driving the planet to the brink of collapse. But Rimowa is trying to encourage consumers to see their suitcase as an object meant to last a lifetime. And it is rebranding everyday wear and tear as something to embrace. Tomorrow’s drop is likely to sell out quickly. But Rimowa plans to do several Re-Crafted drops throughout the year, as it slowly collects and refurbishes products that customers bring in. De Vitis says that, in the future, the brand might start collecting stories as they buy back pieces, because their owners might want to know what their suitcase has experienced in the past. “If you’re a romantic, you might imagine all the things this suitcase has seen,” De Vitis says. “Did it get its first scratch on a wild trip through a safari?” View the full article

The most frequent mistake companies make when applying? They fail to focus on a single, representative example of internally grown innovation. Here’s some advice on how to produce a more compelling application for Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators 2025. Get Real Jargon won’t win you any awards. Applications that read as if they were written to appeal primarily to an internal audience are not likely to earn high marks from our judges. Use clear language to describe your innovation programs. We’re looking for companies that do more than just talk the talk. Be Current Focus on a recent or ongoing example. We’re looking for current hotbeds of innovation—organizations that are working to sustain a creative culture and aren’t resting on the laurels of a handful of breakthroughs from a decade ago. Be Specific We’re looking to honor companies that are accomplishing real innovation, not merely laying the groundwork for future breakthroughs. In other words, focus on real projects delivering measurable results. Be Precise We want details. Who did what when, and how? How’d the idea come about? What initial hurdles needed to be overcome? How big was the team? How long did it take? How much investment was required? Emphasize Outcomes Tell us exactly what was accomplished and what it means. What are the impacts or implications for the company, the industry, the broader community? Be Democratic Your big idea may have originated in the C-suite, but (full disclosure) we’re a bit biased toward ideas that come from the bottom up, from unexpected sources (think interns) because a) they’re more surprising and make for better stories, and b) they are more indicative of a pervasive culture of innovation that rewards exploration at all levels. That said, wherever the idea originated, the emphasis should be on the quality of the innovation, the rigor with which it was pursued, and the inclusivity of the effort to bring the idea to fruition. Tell a Story Exhaustive lists of initiatives are boring. Pick a project that seems most emblematic of your own particular culture of innovation and tell the story. (See Be precise and Be democratic above.) You can always include at the end of your example a quick list of other significant recent efforts that have benefited from the same culture. Don’t Procrastinate This year’s deadline for Best Workplaces for Innovators applications is now just a few days away, March 28. View the full article

When construction started on a new affordable apartment building in Brooklyn, most of the work on the site happened very quickly. Instead of typical construction, cranes lifted giant modular units into the air—each made up of two separate apartments, plus the corridor between them—and set them into place. Trucks delivered nearly four dozen 60-foot-long “mods” from the factory where they were built in Pennsylvania, staging them next to a nearby cemetery in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush. Then, each day for two weeks, construction crews stacked together as many as six of the units. (The massive size of the units made them more challenging to transport than a single modular apartment at a time, but the configuration helped shrink the time for installation on site.) [Photo: courtesy RiseBoro] The apartments were essentially 100% complete inside. (Appliances were strapped to the corridors and just had to be slid into place.) The crew only had to weld the units together and connect wiring and plumbing from each apartment to the hallway. After all of the units were attached, the crew added continuous insulation to the outside and finished other elements like the roof. [Image: courtesy RiseBoro] A project of this size, with 57 apartments and four stories, could have taken 30 months to build, says Yolanda do Campo, director of construction at RiseBoro, the nonprofit developer behind the project. Instead, it took only 22 months. A shorter timeline means significant savings. “Less construction time means fewer months of interest payments,” do Campo says. Interest payments for the project average around $100,000 a month. It also means, of course, that residents can start moving in faster. In this case, the apartments are limited to seniors in New York City’s affordable housing lottery, with a percentage of the units reserved for seniors who were previously homeless. The process has still taken time, in part because of the bureaucracy involved with the housing lottery. The building was completed last fall; the first residents started moving in in January and only a handful live there so far. But faster construction helped. [Image: courtesy RiseBoro] As builders gain more experience in modular construction, it could happen even more quickly. “I really do think that we do this a couple more times and we’re seeing a building come in 15, 16 months, which is somewhat unheard of for something like this,” says Grayson Jordan, principal at PCA, the architecture firm behind the building’s design. While modular apartment buildings are starting to become more common in cities, the project went a step further with a “passive house” design, meaning that it has ultra-low energy demand. The building is well-insulated and airtight. The hot water system runs on a heat pump. The apartments are all-electric and designed to run on solar power, so the building can get as close to net zero energy use as possible. “RiseBoro pays for some of the utilities of the tenants,” says do Campo. “So being passive house and saving energy is critical to the business model—besides contributing to sustainability, we lower the monthly bills.” RiseBoro has pioneered energy-efficient design in other projects, including adding sleek new facades to aging apartment buildings to help them shrink energy use by 80%. Outside, the south side of the building has stepped terraces instead of a flat wall, creating a series of outdoor community spaces for residents and more space for solar panels. There was a learning curve to using modular construction; since the local construction crew didn’t have expertise working with modular units, Riseboro had to help coordinate between the factory and the crew on the ground. But it will get easier in the future, Jordan says. “I see a way forward where this becomes just normal construction,” he says. “It does not seem like rocket science. It just seems like, OK, well, you did this the first time. Let’s work out the kinks.” There are some other potential cost advantages to doing most of the work in a factory offsite. Labor in the Pennsylvania factory is less expensive. And crews can build the modular units year-round without delays because of bad weather. Jordan hopes that it also will become standard for larger affordable apartment buildings. “I think it really makes a lot of sense,” he says. “It’s just a matter of really getting the people who make the decisions comfortable with the idea of building a little bit differently than they’re used to . . . I think we all know that there’s a great need for affordable housing, and this is one of several tools that I think could be powerful in meeting that challenge.” View the full article

Private sector output expands more than expected in March and at its fastest pace in six monthsView the full article

Milestone caps a 40% rally for German software giant over the past year View the full article

The bible tells us to “love your enemies,” and major sports teams seem to be taking that doctrine seriously. Or at least their stadium concession stands are. Fans come to stadiums for the game, but they almost always indulge in the food, too—which typically reflects the cuisine of their home team’s city. But now, baseball and football stadiums have begun offering some local bites of their opponents’ teams in a bid to sell more concessions. On March 27, Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, stadium food for the Washington Nationals will offer a new signature concession item: a platter of loaded nachos dubbed the “Stolen Plate Special.” The toppings on those cheesy chips will change throughout the season to incorporate the “famous flavors of the opposing team’s city,” according to Levy, the hospitality group behind sports and entertainment arenas. This means more opportunity to satisfy visiting fans, increase sales, and even encourage some “culinary” competition. [Photo: Levy] “As chefs, we’re constantly looking at the world around us for inspiration,” says Adam Carter, regional executive chef at Levy who oversees food options at Nationals Park. “Local connection is important, but we also find opportunities to incorporate flavors from other cities or regions, especially if we can represent the visiting team during a big series.” Counter concessions Baseball isn’t the only sport where opposing fans share greasy stadium food. Last year, the NFL’s Buffalo Bills unveiled the “Battle Boat”: a two-foot-long boat of waffle fries that featured one half representing Buffalo fare and the other that of the visiting team. In a a stadium food review video, content creator Cameron Guzzo called the taste “phenomenal.” Buffalo’s massive fry boat changed its toppings with every new opponent that visited the stadium. The Nationals will follow a similar formula to offer fans a taste of the visiting flavors. Sports concessions should be comforting, familiar, and nostalgic, Carter says—even for visiting fans. The first iteration of the Nats’ nacho platter will be cheesesteak nachos for their three-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies. Of course, the dish is an homage to Philadelphia’s famous delicacy. Future Stolen Plate Specials will continue to incorporate different cities’ famous foods. During the Nationals’s series against the New York Mets, the nachos will be topped with everything-bagel chips, pastrami, and swiss cheese sauce to reflect NYC’s famous foods. And during the team’s series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, hatch chile-braised chicken, chicharrons, and a spicy queso will load the nachos to represent the Dbacks. “Fans are prideful when it comes to food, just like they are about their favorite team,” says Carter. “So we like to tap into that passion in a fun way.” View the full article

As consumers, we are accustomed to rating almost all the products and services we pay for. From toilet paper and tacos, to vacation rentals and online courses, a star rating is the status quo for reviewing pretty much any customer experience. But for platform-based gig workers who work to provide all kinds of everyday services, these ratings are nightmare fuel. Taking consumers mere seconds to dole out, anything below the full five out of five stars can completely upend a gig worker’s income and access to work. Academics from around the world have found that negative reviews often serve as disciplinary tools that can reduce a worker’s pay, can generate an “inexplicable” shortage of gigs, or prompt a sudden and unjustifiable suspension or deactivation from the platform. Throw in the many subtle and overt racial biases that influence a user’s approach to ratings, and it’s no wonder gig workers, who make up somewhere between 10% and 38% of the U.S. workforce, are plagued by paranoia and insecurity. At the will of ever-changing, inequitable user review processes, performance metrics and opaque algorithms, one thing is clear: Workers are grappling with invisible digital overlords, just to make enough to scrape by. A new study published in the scientific journal Nature finally offers proof that these star ratings are trash—and suggests that gig workers could get a better shot at fair work with a straightforward design tweak. A small gap with huge consequences Existing research has shown that when customers submit evaluations, individual workers from ethnic minority groups are more likely to be negatively evaluated, even if their performance and quality is the same. Less is known, however, about how to eradicate, or redress these biases, especially in the gig economy landscape. However, Tristan L. Botelho, Katherine DeCelles, Demetrius Humes, and Sora Jun, all academics at North American universities, had a hypothesis that by switching to a binary rating scale (think: thumbs up/thumbs down) these biases could be reduced. An avenue to test this presented itself to the team because the gig economy platform they were collaborating with, which matches North American homeowners with small business entrepreneurs for domestic repairs, decided to simplify its customer ratings from the common five-star system to a straightforward up versus down vote scale. It was a snap decision, with no prior warning to customers or workers. Ratings were conditional on having a job completed, so any customers who held more explicit racist attitudes may have already cancelled. When examining approximately 70,000 customer ratings, collected before and after the sudden change, a distinct pattern emerged. Under the five-star scale, workers of color received slightly lower ratings on average (4.72 stars) than white workers (4.79 stars). But this small gap had huge consequences. Since ratings determined pay, workers of color earned just 91 cents for every dollar white workers made—for the same work. After the switch to a thumbs up versus thumbs down scale, the rating gap and therefore the income gap disappeared. “Any deviation from five stars is problematic as platforms rely so heavily on these ratings, but this was the first time I saw it linked to an outcome for workers, and despite the decades I’ve spent studying inequality in evaluation processes, it shocked me,” says Tristan L. Botelho, coauthor of the paper and Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management. “If you leave a four-star book review, you’re not telling someone to read 80% of the book, yet many platforms allow for the evaluator to create their own rubric for what it means,” explains Botelho. “Your four is different from my four, and with all this noise, switching the focus onto good versus bad offers less room for subtle biases to creep in.” Toward a more level playing field The shift isn’t about letting customers off the hook. More fairly designed systems could, in theory, mitigate racial, gender, and language biases (among others) and the negative effect they have on workers, leading to more accurate evaluations. Star ratings also make it hard to identify and address bad experiences, creating more barriers than solutions. In contrast, upvote/downvote ratings directly ask if the service met customer standards. If not, platforms could follow up to improve. A redesigned rating system could offer a route to supporting worker security, and making platforms seem more responsive and fair. Many evidence-based solutions require training, investment, and expertise. But implementing a simple binary system would be easy for most firms—even starting with small tests in certain markets. “At the end of the day, the many platforms I’ve talked to are interested in making their evaluation processes fair and accurate.” And since the paper’s publication in February, multiple organizations have expressed interest in learning more. “We often take for granted how apps are designed,” says Botelho. “I’d encourage platforms and companies to step back and ask: What is the goal of this evaluation process? Is it actually helping us gather useful information?” Moving away from star ratings won’t solve every problem faced by gig economy workers—only more robust regulation will do that—but it’s certainly a step towards taming those cruel digital gods. View the full article

Let’s say you were spending tens of thousands of dollars to build yourself a fancy home theater. How would you go about actually watching movies in it? While you could always set up a Roku or Apple TV box to stream on, they’re not going to feel all that theatrical. Most streaming devices are too bogged down with banner ads and obnoxious upsells, and the streaming services themselves compromise on audiovisual quality for the sake of smoother streaming. Maybe what you actually need is a device that explicitly caters to videophiles with obsessively-manicured home theater setups. That’s what Kaleidescape has been trying to accomplish for the past two decades. This small company—with roughly 54 employees across its Mountain View headquarters and engineering offices in Waterloo—has made a name for itself among A/V diehards with its eye-poppingly expensive video players, which combine the convenience of digital delivery with Blu-ray quality. Just as notable, though, is its unfussy movie player software, which clears away all the cruft of modern streaming platforms to focus on the films themselves. “What we’re aiming at is trying to get you to an experience that is as close to the director’s intent as you possibly can get,” says Tayloe Stansbury, Kaleidescape’s CEO and chairman. Tayloe Stansbury [Photo: Kaleidescape] The cost of near-cinema quality doesn’t come cheap, at $4,000 for Kaleidescape’s entry-level Strato V Movie Player. But believe it or not, this is the start of Kaleidescape’s attempt to move down-market, having previously charged upwards of $10,000 for its hardware (plus the cost to purchase movies at about $20 apiece). Stansbury, a former Intuit CTO who took the helm at Kaleidescape after getting hooked on the system himself, says he’s on a mission to revitalize the company and reach new audiences after years of stagnant product development. But if that’s the goal, Kaleidescape may eventually need to reckon with the streaming business models it’s spent all these years rejecting. [Photo: Kaleidescape] Hi-fi movies Unlike most TV boxes you can buy today, Kaleidescape does not work with any streaming services or come with a free catalog of ad-supported content. After setting up the Strato V, you are presented with a sparse menu system for downloading movies—either for purchase or rental—and watching them. And “downloading” is the correct term, as Kaleidescape does not believe in the vagaries of streaming. Each film takes about 10 minutes to acquire over a gigabit wired ethernet connection—no Wi-Fi allowed—at which point it will play back even if the system’s offline. No other streaming platform supports that unless you’re on a mobile device. “When you play it, it’s perfect every single time,” Stansbury says. But the main differentiator is the quality of the content itself. While Kaleidescape gets the same source files from studios as every other digital movie store, it’s not in the business of seeing how much compression it can get away with. The company encodes video files at an average 65 Mbps, versus 12 Mbps to 30 Mbps for other services according to FlatpanelsHD, and it delivers lossless audio at 6 Mbps, matching or exceeding the quality of 4K Blu-ray discs with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Kaleidescape is also obsessive about finding issues in its video files through human review, and will either request updates from the studio or apply its own transcoding coding changes to address them. (Stansbury says the company’s record number of revisions for a single film is 92.) “It doesn’t matter if you’re on an inexpensive TV with no soundbar, or you’re in a million dollar theater, it will look and sound better when you feed it with high fidelity content,” he says. The result is sort of like listening to a CD instead of a lossy MP3 file: There are folks who will insist the difference is night and day, others who will never notice, and a third group that feels better on some gut level about having a pristine version either way. I probably fall into the third category. Kaleidescape loaned a Strato V to review for this story, and I made my eyes numb looking for barely-perceptible differences between Kaleidescape’s films and their 4K HDR streaming counterparts. On my Samsung QD-OLED TV, the colors in Mad Max: Fury Road seemed more natural than the on-demand version from Amazon, and maybe the audio was a little clearer, but was I just fooling myself? Hard to say. There was, however, one obvious improvement: Kaleidescape does a better job with subtitles. Its version of Parasite, for instance, used a much nicer font with no black background like Netflix’s version, and certain translated phrases made more sense (like “check WhatsApp” instead of “check the messenger”). Even more noticeable, at least to me as a longtime reviewer of streaming players, was the straightforward nature of Kaleidescape’s interface, which in a way it scratches the same simplistic itch as an iPod for music. There’s a row of recommended movie purchases at the top, a row of downloaded movies underneath, additional rows for movies-in-progress and favorites, and that’s it. The absence of distraction stands in sharp contrast to every modern streaming platform. Sometimes the sparseness can be vexing. There’s no voice search—at least not without dictating into Kaleidescape’s smartphone remote app—and the infrared remote requires line-of-sight to the box. But the system has some niceties as well, like the collection of popular scenes you can jump to in each film and the integration with Lutron, which allows for home automation in response to certain video queues, such as raising the lights when the credits start rolling. Those kinds of experiences have made Kaleidescape a favorite among A/V installers, says John Sciacca, who covered Kaleidescape extensively as a contributing editor for Sound & Vision and works as a partner at an installer in South Carolina. “Everybody wants it,” Sciacca says. “You might not want to pay for it, but you would love to own it. And there’s not too many things out there that deliver that kind of an experience.” Cheating death Kaleidescape didn’t start off in the movie download business. Its first product, which launched in 2003, was a $30,000 video server that made digital copies of users’ DVDs and played them all through single menu system. Bloggers mocked the concept. (“If that’s not worth selling a kidney, we don’t know what is,” Engadget‘s Paul Miller wrote in 2006.) But Kaleidescape won over home theater enthusiasts, who marveled at how it made sense of their DVD collections. It even skipped the FBI warnings and other annoyances that DVD viewers had to sit through. “The experience was just better,” says Josh Goldman, a longtime owner who runs the independent Kaleidescape Owners Forum. “You could instantly sort and find other movies you wanted. You could find related movies to the one you just liked. You couldn’t really do that with a rack of DVDs in their cases.” But there was a problem: The DVD Copy Control Association took issue with Kaleidescape’s digital copies, which had no way of ensuring that users still owned their original DVDs and weren’t sharing them. The group sued Kaleidescape in 2005 and eventually prevailed after seven years of court battles. A settlement in 2014 allowed existing customers to keep using their systems, but barred Kaleidescape from selling any new systems with DVD ripping capabilities. The lawsuit took its toll on Kaleidescape, which also ran into manufacturing problems developing a new Blu-ray-based product around the same time. In 2016, the company almost shut down, with then-CEO Cheena Srinivasan blaming the lawsuit for “millions of dollars in legal fees and years of lost focus” before it secured an equity funding round to stay alive. Sciacca says the company’s brush with death helped accelerate its pivot toward digital distribution, which had began several years earlier. With new funding and no more legal clouds, it was able to make more deals with movie studios. “Kaleidescape was founded on disc-based importing,” he says. “The lawsuit paved the way for Kaleidescape 2.0, but also kind of put an end to Kaleidescape 1.0.” [Photo: Kaleidescape] Making moves Stansbury wound up in control of Kaleidescape for somewhat selfish reasons. He acquired his first system in 2011, on the recommendation of an A/V dealer who was overhauling his home theater. Although he fell in love with the product, he wound up getting frustrated with some gaps in the movie catalog and had some ideas on how to revamp the product line. He reached out to Kaleidescape, offering to make introductions with his contacts in Hollywood, which led to him becoming an investor in the company before taking the helm outright in 2020. “I was annoyed with some decisions that were made about product roadmaps, and I called them up to grump about those,” he says. “And eventually that developed into meeting the chairman and being asked to take over leadership of the company.” Stansbury points to a few things Kaleidescape has done since then. Beyond shipping the Strato V, the company has released new server products with higher storage capacities, and it’s made a foray into B2B with a server product for movie theaters. The idea is that exhibitors can use Kaleidescape for quick, flexible access to back-catalog films at high quality instead of arranging for delivery from studios. “What we’ve done is cranked out a whole new bunch of products,” Stansbury says. “We’ve got a whole bunch of new products I won’t talk to you about that are in the pipeline for the future, and we’ve also been steadily growing revenue and improving the financial picture for the company as well.” Sciacca, who was close with former CEO Cheena Srinivasan, says that while Srinivasan was more engineering-focused, Stansbury brings more of a business sensibility. “Tayloe, the new CEO, I think he came in with different business ideas, and infusion of capital, and, you know, ‘Fortune 500-think’ on how to run a company,” he says. (Kaleidescape declined to make its former leadership available for interviews.) Sticking to the past Back in 2016, when Kaleidescape narrowly avoided shutting down, Sciacca wrote a story for Sound & Vision wondering if home media server products could survive in the streaming age. Kaleidescape had outlasted a wave of competitors—Xperinet MIRV, Sunfire Theater Grand Media Player, Leviton LEAPS, among others—but could never truly compete with streaming’s convenience. He’s more optimistic now, but believes the price needs to come down further. “At the end of the day, if you if you want to buy and watch movies, there’s a lot of cheaper ways to do it,” he says. But going further down-market won’t be easy. Kaleidescape’s movie prices—$25 for new-release films, $8 for a typical rental—is not much higher than other streaming platforms. Stansbury says Kaleidescape customers are surprisingly sensitive about movie prices, so it builds the cost of its ongoing engineering work into the hardware. He’s unsure whether Kaleidescape could adopt a subscription model that brings in ongoing revenue. “Financially, I’d love that, but that doesn’t seem to be where our customers’ heads are at,” he says. “They tend to be more of an ownership mindset.” Even so, Josh Goldman, who runs the Kaleidescape Owner’s Forum, believes the company should move to a cloud-based system. The Strato V can only store 10 movies at a time, so customers have to either constantly re-download films or tack on another server, starting at $5,000. While his forum is more active now than it once was, he believes the number of people willing to install expensive server systems in their home is shrinking, and home internet speeds are now fast enough to keep up with Kaleidescape’s bitrates. “That’s got to be the ultimate survival plan for the company to maintain and deliver the best movie shopping, delivery, and playback experience,” he says. “It can’t be about storage in the home. It’s obviously got to go away.” Beyond just chasing lower prices, Kaleidescape faces a more existential challenge: Increasingly the content people want to watch at home can’t be bought on digital video stores. If you want to watch Severance, you need Apple TV+. If you want to watch Squid Game, you need Netflix. Those shows aren’t available on Kaleidescape at all. Stansbury says he’s had conversations with streamers about potentially selling high-fidelity versions of their streaming exclusives. And in some cases, that content is co-developed with a traditional studio, in which case it does eventually become available to purchase a year or two after release. But he also points out that Kaleidescape’s focus on movies is becoming a bigger advantage as the DVD and Blu-ray business dry up. Best Buy, Walmart, and Target have all stopped selling physical media, and fewer movies are coming out on disc in the first place. Major streaming platforms, meanwhile, don’t even offer Blu-ray quality as an option. “The only way to get that is through Kaleidescape, so it does put us in an increasingly unique position,” Stansbury says. So maybe Kaleidescape doesn’t need to adapt to the streaming world, because it’s survived this long playing a different game entirely. Whatever happens next, enthusiasts like Goldman aren’t betting against it. “Our laser disc player is gone, our VCRs are gone, even our TiVo is gone,” he says. “Everything has changed, but Kaleidescape, remarkably, has been a consistent part of our home video watching for 20 years, which really is amazing.” View the full article

When people talk about work-life balance, they often mean that they have some engagement with activities outside of work—not just filling the hours of the day when they’re not working. That engagement might involve taking care of family members, engaging as a volunteer, or participating in a hobby. If you’re fortunate enough to have the time to spend on a hobby, does it matter what you do? Perhaps any activity you engage in outside of work is likely to lift your spirits. But research suggests that different activities affect your overall happiness in different ways. The power of movement In particular, hobbies that enable you to be active make you happier than those that involve less movement. So, participating in sports or physical activity (even relatively mild activity) makes you happier, as does engaging in activities that involve some travel (like visiting significant buildings) or engaging in active creative pursuits like dancing or singing. In contrast, more sedate activities like going to the movies or theater or reading a book have no strong influence on happiness overall. What is going on here? For one thing, physical activity helps to keep you healthy. The more you move and stay fit, the more you are likely to continue to stay healthy and fit later in life. So, the activities themselves are enjoyable, and they have a positive impact on factors like health that have a positive effect on well-being. Moreover, many of these activities are actively social. A lot of sports require engaging with other people. In addition, a lot of active creative pursuits and travel are done in social groups. Humans are a social species, and so our motivational system and our emotional state thrive when we are around at least a small number of other people. Finding the right hobby for you The hobbies that don’t have much impact on well-being are those that are primarily done while seated and are not particularly social. Reading is typically done alone, though you might ultimately talk about a book with friends. You might go to a theater with friends to see a play or watch a movie, but you actually participate in that activity sitting quietly in the dark. Of course, there are lots of reasons to engage in hobbies. You might want a diversion from your work. You might want to do something relaxing. However, the data suggest that if your goal for taking up a hobby is to be happier and feel more satisfied with life, then staying physically and socially active is likely to be your best bet. View the full article

When companies advertise job openings, they often use buzzwords like ambitious and self-reliant to describe their ideal candidate. These traits sound appealing—what hiring manager wouldn’t want a driven employee? But there’s a catch. In my latest study, published in the journal Management Science with coauthors Scott Jackson and Nick Seybert, I found that these terms may attract job applicants with more narcissistic tendencies. As behavioral researchers in accounting, we are interested in executives who bend the rules. We decided to study job postings after noticing that the language used to describe an “ideal candidate” often included traits linked to narcissism. For example, narcissists tend to see themselves as highly creative and persuasive. Prior research also shows that narcissistic employees are more innovative and willing to take risks to get the success and admiration they crave, even if it means bending the rules. Based on these observations, we compiled two sets of terms commonly used in job postings. We call the two sets “rule-follower” and “rule-bender” language. Some examples of rule-bender language include “develops creative and innovative solutions to problems,” “communicates in a tactical and persuasive manner” and “thinks outside the box.” In contrast, the rule-follower language includes terms like “relies on time-tested solutions to problems,” “communicates in a straightforward and accurate manner” and “thinks methodically.” Through a series of experiments, we found that rule-bender language attracts individuals with higher levels of narcissism for accounting-specific jobs, as well as other industries. To measure narcissism, we used a personality assessment that asks people to choose whether they identify more with more narcissistic statements like, “I always know what I am doing,” or less narcissistic statements like “Sometimes I am not sure of what I am doing.” We also found that recruiters are more likely to use rule-bender terms when hiring for highly innovative, high-growth companies. For accounting positions, recruiters are more likely to use such terms when aggressive financial reporting could benefit the firm. Why it matters Companies write job postings carefully in hopes of attracting the ideal candidate. However, they may unknowingly attract and select narcissistic candidates whose goals and ethics might not align with a company’s values or long-term success. Research shows that narcissistic employees are more likely to behave unethically, potentially leading to legal consequences. While narcissistic traits can lead to negative outcomes, we aren’t saying that companies should avoid attracting narcissistic applicants altogether. Consider a company hiring a salesperson. A firm can benefit from a salesperson who is persuasive, who “thinks outside the box” and who is “results-oriented.” In contrast, a company hiring an accountant or compliance officer would likely benefit from someone who “thinks methodically” and “communicates in a straightforward and accurate manner.” Bending the rules is of particular concern in accounting. A significant amount of research examines how accounting managers sometimes bend rules or massage the numbers to achieve earnings targets. This “earnings management” can misrepresent the company’s true financial position. In fact, my coauthor Nick Seybert is currently working on a paper whose data suggests rule-bender language in accounting job postings predicts rule-bending in financial reporting. Our current findings shed light on the importance of carefully crafting job posting language. Recruiting professionals may instinctively use rule-bender language to try to attract someone who seems like a good fit. If companies are concerned about hiring narcissists, they may want to clearly communicate their ethical values and needs while crafting a job posting, or avoid rule-bender language entirely. What still isn’t known While we find that professional recruiters are using language that attracts narcissists, it is unclear whether this is intentional. Additionally, we are unsure what really drives rule-bending in a company. Rule-bending could happen due to attracting and hiring more narcissistic candidates, or it could be because of a company’s culture—or a combination of both. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Jonathan Gay is an assistant professor of accountancy at the University of Mississippi. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

There’s a strange thing that happens when someone says, “Only three left in stock,” or when a sale ends at midnight, or when a product is labeled “limited edition.” Or when we hear the phrase, “But don’t wait—these are moving fast.” Even if the item wasn’t on your shopping list a moment ago, all of a sudden, the item starts to feel important—urgent, even. There’s a name for this: The Scarcity Effect. This experience is, of course, not unique. You knew exactly the scenarios I mentioned in the first paragraph because you’ve heard them countless times before. Even more, not only is the phrasing recognizable, most of us have felt the internal nudge that we should buy something now, simply because it might not be available later. We’ve bought things we didn’t need—not because we truly valued them—but because we feared missing out. And it’s influencing more decisions than we realize. What is the Scarcity Effect? The Scarcity Effect is a psychological principle that occurs when people place a higher value on something that is limited in availability. The less available something becomes (or appears to become), the more we desire it—whether we actually need it or not. On some level, it makes sense. Diamonds are more valuable than rocks because diamonds are not as abundant and more scarce. But these perceptions can result in irregular or even unhealthy decision-making when the scarcity is entirely manufactured. The principle has been studied for decades. A classic experiment from 1975 by researchers Worchel, Lee, and Adewole involved two jars of cookies. One jar held ten cookies, while the other held only two. Participants were asked to rate the cookies—and overwhelmingly, the cookies from the nearly empty jar were rated as more desirable and valuable, even though they were exactly the same. Scarcity increases perceived value, even if the value is no different. Marketers and retailers know this well. They create scarcity intentionally—limited-time offers, countdown timers, flash sales, exclusive collections, seasonal releases. No doubt, you’ve seen them all over the Internet and in brick-and-mortar stores. All of these tactics are designed to trigger the internal fear that if we don’t act now, we’ll miss out. Here’s an entire article offering marketers “innovative ideas” to create scarcity and urgency, encouraging people to take quick action on an item for sale. And so often, we act—often without thinking clearly about whether we actually need the item or not. Or whether the scarcity is true or manufactured. The Scarcity Effect pushes us to buy things out of fear, not purpose. It clouds our judgment and convinces us that a possession is more important than it really is—just because it might not be available later. And in doing so, it creates negative effects on our lives: it empties our wallets and often fills our homes with items we never truly needed in the first place. Not only do the items we buy clutter our physical space, they also take up our time, energy, and attention—precisely the things minimalism helps us reclaim. How to Overcome the Scarcity Effect It’s one thing to be aware of the Scarcity Effect. It’s another to overcome it—not just once, but as a lifestyle. But we can do both. Here are some helpful ways to resist this all-too-common temptation: 1. Pause before purchasing. When scarcity is used to create urgency, one of the most effective responses is simply to pause. Rarely is a purchase as urgent as the marketing claims it to be. If something is truly needed, it will still be needed tomorrow. Take 24 hours before making a decision. If the desire fades, so did the illusion of need. “But what about the deadline?” you might ask. My mom summed it up really well when I was young. “If a salesman is pressuring you that there’s a deadline on a purchase, it’s almost never a good deal.” 2. Ask: “Would I want this if it wasn’t limited?” Strip away the scarcity messaging and ask honestly: “Would I still want this item if it were always available at this price?” Or you can try, “Would I still want this if there were thousands of them still available?” That question might help reveal whether the desire is genuine or artificially inflated. 3. Recognize fear-based marketing for what it is. Most scarcity-based tactics are not there to help us, they are there to manipulate us. The more we recognize phrases like “only two left” or “before it’s gone forever” as psychological tricks, the easier they are to ignore. Additionally, the more we recognize them around us almost everywhere we look, the easier it becomes to decipher which are entirely manufactured to manipulate us. 4. Focus on long-term value, not short-term emotion. The Scarcity Effect thrives on impulse. Minimalism, on the other hand, thrives on intentionality. Long-term value should always outweigh short-term emotion. One of the best questions to ask is, “How will this item improve my life one year from now?” Or, “Will this item help me accomplish my purpose in life? Or just distract me from it?” If the answer is unclear, it’s probably not worth owning. 5. Remember: scarcity doesn’t create worth—purpose does. It’s easy to believe that something is valuable just because it’s rare. But minimalism invites us to rethink the perceived value of almost everything. Purpose is what brings value and fulfillment into our homes and lives—not scarcity, status, deadlines, or hype. And an unneeded tool left on the shelf is more valuable than a trendy gadget collecting dust. The Scarcity Effect is a cognitive bias that often influences our behavior—both in the pursuit and accumulation of physical things. But once we recognize it, we can begin to overcome it. And the more we overcome it, the more intentional our lives become. The post The Scarcity Effect: Why We Buy More Than We Need appeared first on Becoming Minimalist. View the full article

An ambitious plan aims to double the size of the city and make it a hub for growth and innovation. But will its infrastructure cope?View the full article

Financial regulator also aims to increase trust in markets by clamping down on fraudView the full article

Stock market falls and policy uncertainty from president’s administration have held back longed-for revivalView the full article

It has been building, and is likely to be unravelling, for a long timeView the full article