Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Fast Company

“This entire enterprise has been a response to the question, ‘What if?’” Filmmaker and producer J.J. Abrams never set out to build an empire, but his company, Bad Robot, is one of the most diversified and ambitious media outfits to emerge from Hollywood in a generation. In this issue’s cover story, writers Nicole LaPorte and KC Ifeanyi offer a rare peek into Bad Robot’s quirky headquarters and the wide array of ideas hatching inside. There’s definitely a “J.J.’s playhouse” feel to the place, which features an actual toy workshop, a printing press, a music studio, and carefully curated knickknacks. What can business leaders learn from a movie director, fresh off shooting Star Wars: Episode IX, who clearly prefers creating fictional worlds to crunching numbers? For starters, that curiosity and the…

PRODUCER WILL PACKER’S FILMS, SUCH as the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, Tiffany Haddish’s breakout vehicle Girls Trip, and the dance drama Stomp the Yard, have generated more than $1 billion at the box office by making blockbusters that appeal to black audiences and beyond. His latest film, Little, starring Issa Rae and Black-ish’s Marsai Martin, was coproduced by 14-year-old Martin, whom he worked with to develop and pitch the idea for a Big-in-reverse-style comedy. You’ve collaborated with a lot of powerful women over the years, including Tiffany Haddish, Queen Latifah, and Taraji P. Henson. Little showcases the talent of 14-year-old Marsai Martin, both behind and in front of the camera. She’s now the youngest person ever to have produced a Hollywood movie. What made you want to work with…

1 Waking Up “EVERY TIME THE SUN COMES UP,” SHARON VAN ETTEN This song is a bit of a joke but still has that melancholy depth and richness that sets a grounded tone for the start of the day. 2 Driving “RAIN IN LAFAYETTE,” PAT GREEN There’s something about this song that makes me feel like I’m driving through the countryside, even if I’m just sitting in the backseat of an Uber in L.A. traffic. 3 Working Out “SOLDIER,” DESTINY’S CHILD (FEAT. T. I. AND LIL WAYNE) My favorite workout playlists are 80% Beyoncé, 20% ’90s hip-hop. 4 Hard at Work “WAIT FOR IT,” HAMILTON SOUNDTRACK/LESLIE ODOM JR. I hope I’m not the only one who has imagined being Aaron Burr when struggling with a project. 5 Mellowing Out “WILL…

The Mini-Grid SIEMENS When Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, in September 2017, the island lost all power. The consequences were deadly. Hospitals couldn’t operate crucial equipment, including respirators, and drugs that require refrigeration, such as insulin, were ruined. An estimated 135,000 people fled to the mainland, and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) needed 11 months to fully restore service. Death toll estimates reached 2,975. As Puerto Rico grappled with the difficulty of running a country without power, energy companies, including Sunrun and Sonnen, set up solar microgrids and battery storage to deliver electricity. Elon Musk pledged to do the same, and Tesla batteries are now powering parts of the island. These small-scale systems helped bring rural community centers and schools back online. But Puerto Rico needed a broader…

Lots of people can spy on you online—even your own internet service provider (ISP). In 2017, Congress abolished rules preventing ISPs from collecting customer traffic data for marketing. One easy way for them to do that is to record every numerical IP address your web browser looks up. In April 2018, content-delivery network Cloudflare teamed with the Mozilla Foundation to create a free system that protects consumers from snooping third parties. The Firefox browser bypasses your ISP and sends lookup requests to Cloudflare’s own DNS server, at the internet address 1.1.1.1. This traffic is also encrypted to prevent any online snoop (whether ISP, hacker, or government) from deciphering a list of sites you visit. In November, Cloudflare released the free, one-click 1.1.1.1 app, which encrypts connections between all Android or…

World-Changing Company of the Year CannonDesign Dalberg Design Mastercard Sasaki Siemens Southern California Edison Sweetgreen World Food Programme General Excellence Amazon Go Amazon Article One The OpenGov Foundation and Twilio Boundless Boundless Immigration Call for Code IBM Charting a global path to digital peace Microsoft Climate-action strategy Levi Strauss & Co. Climate-positive menu Max Burgers AB Four-day workweek Perpetual Guardian The Human Account Dalberg Design MethaneSat Environmental Defense Fund Nori Nori 1.1.1.1 Cloudflare Perpetual Purpose Trust Organically Grown Company and Purpose Network Plastic-Free Aisle A Plastic Planet Tatami Untitled Group UCOT UCOT Urban95 Bernard van Leer Foundation Wedew Skysource/Skywater Alliance Advertising Feed Our Future World Food Programme Fight Gunfire With Fire MullenLowe G’ ay Mate Interbrand Just Do It Nike LGBTQ World Cup Russian-language campaign Babbel Rising R/GA and the…

Picking up a good book or watching a great movie are just two vehicles for escaping the world around you. But if a medium’s entertainment value lies in its ability to whisk us away to someplace new, nothing holds a candle to virtual reality (VR). Survios, a virtual reality game developer, distributor, and software publisher, uses proprietary software tools to create experiences that blur the lines between Hollywood and gaming. In its latest release, CREED: Rise to Glory™, players train like Adonis Creed, interacting with characters from the Creed and Rocky franchises. Seth Gerson, CEO of the Los Angeles-based company, says it takes unexpected elements like physics and locomotive technology to build a game so realistic, you’ll feel like a champion. Survios earned the No. 5 spot on Fast Company’s…

Tyler Haney was fed up. Last November, she was trying to fill an executive role at her athleisure company, Outdoor Voices, and had brought in an external recruiting firm. Haney had been clear about what she was looking for, but the recruiters seemed oblivious to—or disdainful of—her wishes. So the 30-year-old founder and CEO went on her In stagram account and posted a sweaty gym selfie to her nearly 50,000 followers with an impassioned caption: “I may look sweet and people call me cute… but underneath it all I am a BEAST. It’s wild how many people try to chip away at this strength on a daily basis.” The message was nonspecific in a way that prevented any controversy. And it was more about energizing her users than selling product—though…

Stomp the Yard It was tough to get this film green-lighted. Studios didn’t understand what stepping was or know about black fraternities and sororities. I went to Sony, which made You Got Served, and I sold it through the lens of a dance movie. ESTIMATED BOX OFFICE $61.3 million* Obsessed Beyoncé passed on [playing one of the lead roles] at first. We came back and said, “What do you need to do it?” And then we removed every single reason for her to say “no.” ESTIMATED BOX OFFICE $68.3 million Straight Outta Compton I learned to never give up on a project if you believe in it. The team behind this project stuck with it for over 10 years, but ultimately it got made [and received] worldwide critical acclaim. ESTIMATED…

At Lineage Logistics’ 160–plus locations worldwide, you’ll find bustling warehouses with trucks, railroad cars, and cargo ships coming and going. While most people may not know what happens inside, employees will happily tell you Lineage’s purpose: “To transform the food supply chain to eliminate waste and feed the world.” Since its founding in 2008, Lineage has become one of the world’s largest temperature-controlled warehousing and logistics companies, says Greg Lehmkuhl, president and CEO. Merging Silicon Valley innovation with the old-world business of temperature-controlled logistics, Lineage stores and moves food around the world. The company was ranked No. 23 on Fast Company’s Top 50 Most Innovative Companies, and No. 1 in the Data Science category. PURPOSE-DRIVEN INNOVATION Lineage’s growth is fueled by acquiring companies whose locations and capabilities help meet customer’s…

Made by Israeli designer Nir Chehanowski, this whimsical lamp creates an optical illusion via a flat acrylic sheet that’s been laser cut into an intricate, curving pattern. When the dimmable LED light is turned on, the glowing sheet looks three-dimensional. Chehanowski started his “bulbing” series of fixtures five years ago, before getting picked up by the MoMA Design Store. ($170, store.moma.org) Reading List The Books That Inspire Me ARLAN HAMILTON, FOUNDER, BACKSTAGE CAPITAL 1 Outliers MALCOLM GLADWELL Learning the origin stories of so many successful white men made me understand that success for myself was attainable. If they could do it, I certainly could. 2 This Naked Mind ANNIE GRACE I’d struggled with an addiction to alcohol for 15 years when I came across this book and decided to give…

Wendy’s isn’t afraid to drop the mic. Three million plus people follow the brand for its saucy tweets and good-natured burns. The brand represented by a sweet-faced, red-haired girl roasts fans, cracks jokes, and calls out competitors. She also promotes her menu, gives away free food, and even dabbles in the occasional rap battle. Kurt Kane, Wendy’s executive vice president and chief concept and marketing officer (CMO), calls the brand voice “sassy.” And the company’s Twitter persona is a natural extension of the Wendy’s brand Dave Thomas founded in 1969. From day one, the hamburger franchise positioned itself as different from the competitors—an alternative to fast-food options Thomas saw as less than satisfactory. But you can’t just pound your chest and declare you’re better, Kane cautions. Wendy’s playful approach allows…

Pioneer.app PIONEER APP Daniel Gross was accepted into Y Combinator’s accelerator program at just 18 and sold an AI-powered search engine to Apple for a reported $35 million at 22. Now 27, the tech entrepreneur is helping other founders through Pioneer, an online community that enables anyone in the world to compete for a prize package that includes a $1,000 grant, $6,000 in cryptocurrency, and $100,000 in Google Cloud credit, plus the chance for future investment from Pioneer. In August 2018, Gross debuted the concept as a gamified 30-day challenge: Applicants complete points-driven “quests” (games, puzzles, quizzes, providing feedback to other participants) and vote each other’s concepts up or down a leaderboard. Within the first six months, Pioneer has announced 39 winners from three challenges that drew several thousand contestants.…

Upsolve UPSOLVE For people who go into debt after losing a job or incurring unexpected medical ex-penses, declaring bankruptcy can help reset their lives. But many cannot afford the roughly $2,000 in attorney fees to file the necessary paperwork. Upsolve, a free TurboTax-like web app from a nonprofit of the same name, fills in the 23 jargon-heavy forms automatically. “We want to be a lifeline,” says cofounder and CEO Rohan Pavuluri, who began developing the platform as an undergraduate at Harvard. In its first year of operation, the startup has helped more than 500 people erase their debts, a larger number than any other nonprofit in the U.S. While the process still uses in-house attorneys to review forms before submission, software shrinks the time it takes from hours to five…

The Four-Day Workweek PERPETUAL GUARDIAN At one large company in New Zealand, some employees no longer work on Fridays. Others don’t work Wednesdays. But everyone is paid a full-time salary. Perpetual Guardian, a statutory trust company with 240 employees, first tested a four-day workweek in early 2018, collaborating with academic researchers from two Auckland universities to study the impact on its business. After the eight-week-long trial, employees reported lower levels of stress, higher levels of job satisfaction, and a much greater sense of work-life balance. Just as significantly, despite the reduced hours, productivity didn’t decline. In November, the company decided to make the changes permanent. Andrew Barnes, the company’s founder, has thus far seen no downside. “In fact, the company is performing better than it did last year.” Barnes had…

Dev Aujla Author, 50 Ways to Get a Job: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Work on Your Terms George Aye Cofounder and director of innovation, Greater Good Studio Chrysanthe Broikos Curator, National Building Museum Will Byrne Senior resident, Ideo CoLab Jean Case Chairman, National Geographic Society; CEO, Case Foundation Ivan Cash Principal, Cash Studios Robin Chase Executive chair, NUMO Carol Cone CEO, Carol Cone on Purpose John Elkington Founder and chief pollinator, Volans Robert Fabricant Cofounder and partner, Dalberg Design Phillip Haid Cofounder and CEO, Public Jessica Jackley Chief impact officer, Aspiration Jonathon Keats Experimental philosopher, artist, and writer Cliff Kuang Author, User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Shape the Way We Live, Work & Play Alnoor Ladha Executive director, The Rules Brittany Lane Senior director of media,…

Usually, when a company creates a breakthrough product, process, or technology, it seeks to make a profit from it. But The Raymond Corporation, a Greene, New York, warehouse equipment manufacturer and solutions provider, has been known to take their innovation-driven patents and donate them back to their industry. Their goal is to encourage innovation and forward-thinking ideas that can fuel change and growth. When Raymond patented the first double-sided wooden pallet in 1939, the invention was a game-changer in stacking products and optimizing storage space. The company allowed others to use the design free of charge, benefitting the entire industry, says CEO Mike Field. Raymond also recently developed and patented a standard for energy storage systems. Now, other logistics companies may use that innovation to create a universal standard for…

Gimmick MADEWELL This February, J.Crew-owned Madewell created its first women’s swimwear brand of bikinis, one-pieces, and cover-ups made from recycled plastic. The line uses eight plastic bottles per one-piece and four per bikini. STELLA MCCARTNEY The fur- and leather-free fashion designer is working to phase out virgin nylon by 2020 and virgin polyester by 2025, while championing recycledplastic fabrics that live up to the high expectations of luxury buyers. ADIDAS Adidas has committed to eliminating plastic bags in its stores and using recycled polyester “on every application where a solution exists by 2024.” The company’s sustainability team includes about 70 lawyers, engineers, and environmental auditors. GIRLFRIEND COLLECTIVE This athleisure-wear company’s entire line of leggings and sports bras are made from recycled plastics. Since some “recyclers” process new bottles (rather than…

A Closer Look Here’s how the Wavecel Bontrager helmet works to prevent a concussion. FLEX The cells, structured like honeycomb, flex to minimize the force of the impact. FOLD The cells buckle and crumple. GLIDE The cells slide, moving energy away from the head and redirecting it. For decades, bike helmets have been primarily designed to prevent one thing: skull fractures. Most products are made with EPS foam, the same material used in beer coolers, which simply cushions the head upon impact. But with increasing attention being paid to concussions and other traumatic brain injuries (due, in part, to pro football), finding ways to protect what’s within the skull is becoming top of mind. The new Wavecel Bontrager helmet from Trek Bikes, a leading cycling-gear company based in Waterloo, Wisconsin,…

Biba wants you to spend more time with your smartphone—this time at your neighborhood playground. The company merges digital and real-world fun in a way that modernizes playground structures that haven’t changed much in the past 100 years. Matt Toner, Biba’s CEO, read the research showing that children were sacrificing outdoor play time for screen time, but he also knew from personal experience just how difficult it can be to enforce a parental ban on touchscreen devices. He and his team devised an elegant way to harness that fixation into a healthy channel. Today, more than 3,600 Biba-powered playgrounds can be found in virtually every area of the world from northern Canada to the Middle East to the South Pacific. These playgrounds have easy-to-install, scannable markers that don’t require electricity…

What’s your best habit, and your worst? My best is that I’m relentless about improving—I’m good at being motivated by criticism. My worst is saying yes to things when I should default to no. When I’m creatively stuck, I… Play a quick match of Heroes of the Storm if my friends are on. What’s the business buzzword you never want to hear or see again? Hustle porn [the fetishization of overworking]. It’s my mission to purge the farce. What’s the best mistake you ever made? Oversleeping that morning in Rome and meeting my future wife at breakfast. When I need to unplug, I… Hide my phone and play with my daughter. What book do you recommend to everyone? Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-house-Five, a sci-fi adventure about the costs of war and the…

The notOk App SIBLINGS HANNAH AND CHARLIE LUCAS As a freshman in high school two years ago, Hannah Lucas developed a chronic illness called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which causes frequent fainting spells. On top of the physical difficulty of navigating her daily life, she was bullied, and became so severely depressed that she began contemplating suicide. Fortunately, her mother was there to counsel her. But what if she hadn’t been? What if Hannah needed to call for help, and no one was around? Voicing these thoughts to her younger brother, Charlie, she kept coming back to the idea of a simple app that would function as a distress call: If activated, it would automatically send a text to trusted contacts. Charlie, who had been learning to code since he…

HeadGaze EBAY eBay’s HeadGaze technology makes mobile device applications accessible to people who can’t operate a traditional mouse, keyboard, or touch screen. Its software taps into augmented reality features built into Apple’s iPhone X, tracking users’ head movements through the phone’s camera and offering a digital cursor for clicking, turning pages, and scrolling. eBay came up with the idea after joining Partnership on AI, a consortium of tech companies interested in finding new ways to apply AI technologies to improve people’s lives. The initial prototype, an overlay for existing web pages, debuted in September 2018 after four months of tinkering, much of it led by programming intern Muratcan Cicek, who has motor-control issues. eBay open-sourced the software’s blueprints on GitHub so other programmers could build the interface into their sites.…

With a background in live events, Ryan Hogan and Derrick Smith were fascinated by the rising popularity of immersive entertainment. In 2016, escape rooms burst on the scene, and interactive theater like the Off-Broadway production of Sleep No More, based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was captivating audiences. People wanted new experiences, so why not tap into that interest? Their idea was to create a 200-acre living crime scene outside of Baltimore. The instinct was good—more than 600 people flocked to the three-hour live experience—but the idea didn’t scale very well. So, they looked at trends in other industries, weaving in the subscription box business model. In July 2016, they launched Hunt A Killer, a monthly subscription storytelling game that delivers clues, evidence, and correspondence. Game players use the clues and…

As cybercriminals become bolder and more technologically sophisticated, making products as hack-proof as possible can feel overwhelming. Fortunately, developers and manufacturers have access to a worldwide team of experts who think just like the hackers do—because they’re hackers, too. You could call Bugcrowd cybersecurity’s version of The Avengers. The San Francisco-based company is also No. 10 on Fast Company’s 2019 Most Innovative Companies list in the Security category. With more than 135 employees and a platform that includes hundreds of thousands of vetted and skilled white-hat hackers, the Bugcrowd team relentlessly searches for vulnerabilities in its clients’ products. The first hacker to report a bug gets a “bug bounty”—a fee based on the bug’s severity and business impact. The company then helps clients address those issues and build more secure…

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