You Need an Innovation Strategy

S6

You Need an Innovation Strategy     Without such a strategy, companies will have a hard time weighing the trade-offs of various practices—such as crowdsourcing and customer co-creation—and so may end up with a grab bag of approaches. They will have trouble designing a coherent innovation system that fits their competitive needs over time and may be tempted to ape someone else’s system. And they will find it difficult to align different parts of the organization with shared priorities. Continued here

S37

Amazing STEM Toys for the Techie Kids in Your Life     If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDAnyone who has ever watched a toddler methodically take apart a Tupperware drawer should know that many children are natural-born engineers. Your only job as a parent is to nurture their creativity … and clean up the mess afterward. Between us—product reviewer Scott Gilbertson, editor Adrienne So, and I—we have seven kids. This, honestly, is the most fun part of my job—calling in STEM toys for my kids and I to test together and recommend to you. It hardly feels like work at all. Continued here

�

S19

4 Fundamental Ways to Boost Employee Engagement     With the rise of hybrid and remote work, there’s a real danger — unless companies think deeply about what kind of a culture they’re developing — that workers may come to feel like “just another face on the zoom screen.” Employees need to know that their leaders value them and their unique perspective. If employees feel that their ideas and suggestions don’t matter, it’s very hard for them to feel engaged. Continued here

S35

Imagine If Joe Biden's AI Executive Order Were Inspired by 'The Terminator'     Science fiction, for decades, has been about predicting the future—and warning against it. Even as Star Trek envisioned the wonders of flip phones and iPads, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash warned of the dystopian nature of the metaverse.Throughout 2023, as artificial intelligence has creeped its way into every corner of public, private, and creative life, it's been easy to see the lessons sci-fi tried to teach. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data was a bot who worked in harmony with organic beings; Hal 9000, in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, (spoiler) goes all murder-y to save its own life. Continued here

�

S25

Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?     The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.   Continued here

S29

Introducing the Future Earth newsletter: Get the latest climate solutions delivered to your inbox     Our changing planet is one of the biggest stories of our time. The scale of this challenge calls for groundbreaking solutions.Covering climate change and sustainability is a key part of my job as a correspondent for BBC News. Now, there is a newsletter that will bring my journalism on the subject direct to you. Continued here

� � �

S26

Shukubo: The Japanese temples where you can sleep alongside monks     In the serene world of Japanese Buddhist monks, life takes on a distinctive form, interwoven with discipline and mindfulness. These monks subscribe to a unique method of meditation, often sitting upright, supported only by a modest cushion. In this position, they uphold a constant state of awareness, embodying the Buddhist quality of prolonged concentration. This approach to faith is just one facet of a monk's lifestyle, which revolves around spiritual dedication and mindfulness.Their days typically commence with pre-dawn meditation, followed by a simple breakfast composed of vegetarian or vegan offerings. As the sun rises, the monks chant to foster self-awareness and inner peace. Continued here

S20

3 Ways to Build an Organizational Culture That Supports Mental Health     The cultural shift toward greater mental health awareness has helped bring needed attention to psychological suffering, improve access to mental health resources, and reduce stigma. However, it may also be increasing the pathologization of ordinary life, leading people to think of themselves as mentally fragile and unwell. This creates a challenge for employers. How can they support workers’ mental health without encouraging them to dwell on their negative thoughts and feelings? The author argues in favor of what he calls an outward-action approach to mental health: evidence-based mental health strategies that don’t encourage a fixation on one’s own negative thoughts and emotions. Continued here

S12

How Made In Cookware Leverages Its Partnership With This Top Chef     Co-founder Jake Kalick admits his initial approach to chef endorsements was 'really dumb.' Continued here

S27

The human-chimp bond captured in an iconic photo     On 14 July 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived by boat to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania. Here, in what is now Gombe Stream National Park, her ground-breaking scientific research into chimpanzee behaviour began.Previously a secretarial student without an undergraduate degree in science, Goodall says she observed her wild subjects with an open mind and without preconceptions. Controversially at the time, she defied convention by giving these chimps names instead of numbers. Continued here

S4

Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything     In the past few years, a new methodology for launching companies, called “the lean start-up,” has begun to replace the old regimen. Traditionally, a venture’s founders would write a business plan, complete with a five-year forecast, use it to raise money, and then go into “stealth mode” to develop their offerings, all without getting much feedback from the people they intended to sell to. Lean start-ups, in contrast, begin by searching for a business model. They test, revise, and discard hypotheses, continually gathering customer feedback and rapidly iterating on and reengineering their products. This strategy greatly reduces the chances that start-ups will spend a lot of time and money launching products that no one actually will pay for. Continued here

S22

The Skills Your Employees Need to Work Effectively with AI     Leaders understand that the future will involve humans working with AI and feel immense pressure to “do something” to implement AI solutions. But how do they actually integrate AI with their workforce to achieve good business outcomes? Interviews with company leaders and CEOs shed light on a counterintuitive answer: invest more in two important human skills. Specifically, companies report the need for 1) effective interpersonal skills — the ability to effectively communicate, meaningfully engage with others, and garner team cooperation — and 2) domain knowledge that can help workers get the most — and make the best decisions — when working with AI tools. Continued here

S15

How to Design a Thriving Remote Work Culture     Build and sustain a strong organizational culture with these strategic tips. Continued here

S17

Science Just Revealed the Brutal Truth About Online Meetings. Here's How to Fix Them     Heck, even the CEO of Zoom acknowledged having Zoom fatigue. Continued here

S21

How to Strengthen Your Curiosity Muscle     Building our curiosity muscle is essential because it will aid in the efficiency of leadership, enables continual learning, and because it’s a sought after skill by employers. Like any muscle, to strengthen it, you must activate and exercise it.  You can strengthen your curiosity muscle by ditching excuses, finding the right angle, changing up your routine, experimenting, and shifting your focus once you become uninterested. Curiosity is a skill that is useful in every context, whether it be in the workplace or in the lives of your loved ones. It shows interests, prompts discovery, and finally, leaves all involved parties changed in some form or fashion — all by way of a simple question of who, what, when, where, why, or how. Continued here

S8

HR Strategies to Support Your Employees During Periods of Fast Growth     Learn how simple human resources planning can take care of your employees while your business scales. Continued here

S18

Why Big Projects Fail -- and How to Give Yours a Better Chance of Success     There are five reasons that large projects fail. Wrong projects are ones that defy conventional business rationale, creating outputs that either few people want, that add little to no real value, or that undershoot the desired benefits because they are so difficult to achieve. A second reason is unreasonable constraints — when the effort doesn’t have adequate funding, people, time, or other key inputs. Lack of effective leadership is another project killer, as is undue complexity, where projects span multiple teams, business units, geographies, and organizations and face volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity. A final obstacle to project success is too much or too little management. To avoid these pitfalls, smart companies should hire senior executives who are project management experts, commit to clear processes and strong governance, and empower project managers. Continued here

S9

Hiring Slows in October After September Surge     Employers added 150,000 jobs last month, as the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9 percent. Continued here

S62

A Book That Was Like Putting on 'a New Set of Glasses'     The literary internet is full of lists that suggest books that will inform you about one subject or another—we just published one last week in this very newsletter (on what to read to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). But recently, we decided to go a bit deeper and asked Atlantic writers and editors for books that changed how they think. We were looking for reading experiences that went beyond just adding knowledge—not a small thing, I know—and that gave readers a whole different way of perceiving the world. The entries were revealing and fun. Graeme Wood wrote about Steve Martin’s collection of stories Cruel Shoes and how it opened him up to the possibilities and joys of strangeness. Clint Smith explained how Meghan O’Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom allowed him to appreciate what it might be like to experience life with a chronic illness. After reading James Nestor’s Breath, Olga Khazan realized she was breathing all wrong. I didn’t add my own contribution to this list, but I thought I would share it here, because I think about its argument almost every day.The book that gave me “a new set of glasses,” as we put it in the prompt to our writers, was Neil Postman’s 1985 diatribe, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman was a media-studies professor at New York University who worried about the dominance of television and the way it was molding our public sphere, making political rhetoric more superficial and more concerned with entertaining and holding attention. He was basically taking Marshall McLuhan’s aphoristic insight that “the medium is the message” and applying it to an age of sound bites, televised debates, and pervasive commercials. The medium we use sets the limits for what we can think and how we can think, McLuhan established. So Postman argued that if our lives as citizens take place on television—a fast-moving, visual medium—then our politics will be molded to fit these biases (as Megan Garber succinctly put it in her insightful essay on the book, “There are dangers that can come with having too much fun”). Postman saw great peril in the degradation of discourse as society moved from print, a medium that demanded reasoned argument, toward one overwhelmed by what we would today call optics. Continued here

S23

Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake     Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel. Continued here

S28

Sea sponges offer lifeline to women in Zanzibar     As a gentle morning breeze blows across the Zanzibar shore, Hindu Simai Rajabu walks through knee-deep water to reach a shallow lagoon off the coast of Jambiani, Tanzania, where her floating sponge farm is located.Sporting shiny goggles and with a snorkel placed on top of her headscarf, Rajabu wades through the Indian Ocean, her laughter at the experience of being filmed mingling with the sound of the crashing waves. Continued here

S30

Why grazing bison could be good for the planet     It takes mettle to live on Montana's shortgrass prairie. It's dry, windy and a long way from anywhere. In summer, temperatures can top 100F (38C). In winter, the mercury plunges to -50F (-45C). In some spots, it is more than an hour's drive on gravel roads to buy a loaf of bread. When you get back, grasshoppers start cannibalising their brethren impaled on your car grille.The indigenous Blackfeet, Nakoda and Gros Ventre peoples successfully adapted to the harsh environment over many centuries. More recently, a handful of hardy white settlers managed it too. Both left their mark on this forbidding land with fire, arrows and the plough. The shortgrass prairie makes up 71 million hectares (27,413 sq miles) of remote land straddling the US/Canadian border to the east of the Rocky Mountains. This rare habitat is in ecological decline. For the last 150 years, wildlife have surrendered the prime habitat to cows. Crested wheatgrass, a non-native plant seeded by European settlers for their cattle, paints swathes of land yellow in summer. Continued here

S39

'Now and Then,' the Beatles' Last Song, Is Here, Thanks to Peter Jackson's AI     Following a lot of hype—and a quarter century of work—"Now and Then," presumably the last song to feature all four original Beatles, is here. The track dropped yesterday and the music video, directed by Peter Jackson, hit YouTube today. Sweet and haunting, it's full of piano and strings, and it wouldn't have been possible without the machine learning technology Jackson used on the docuseries Get Back.How the AI technology became the thing that saved the song is a bit of a journey. Years after John Lennon died in 1980, his wife, the musician and multimedia artist Yoko Ono, told his bandmate Paul McCartney that she had a demo tape Lennon had recorded at their apartment in the Dakota in New York City. Continued here

S53

Intel's failed 64-bit Itanium CPUs die another death as Linux support ends     Officially, Intel's Itanium chips and their IA-64 architecture died back in 2021, when the company shipped its last processors. But failed technology often dies a million little deaths. To name just a few: Itanium also died in 2013, when Intel effectively decided to stop improving it; in 2017, when the last new Itanium CPUs shipped; in 2020, when the last Itanium-compatible version of Windows Server stopped getting updates; and in 2003, when AMD introduced a 64-bit processor lineup that didn't break compatibility with existing 32-bit x86 operating systems and applications. Continued here

S66

Iizuna fair | Psyche Films     The Japanese artist Sumito Sakakibara’s enigmatic short film Iizuna Fair drifts through the mental space of a man lost in memory, seemingly after his car has careened off the road. With Sakakibara describing the barely seen protagonist as ‘buried under memories full of inhibition and promises that never kept’, the window into his inner world seems tinged with both nostalgia and regret. A slow drift in perspective reveals a surreal swirl of images, with the action centred on the bustle of a fair in the small town of Iizuna, Nagano Prefecture. The vibrant colour and bustle of fair rides, ice skaters and food stands is given a haunting quality by the shifting human figures and faces that move through the scene, and a plaintive piano-and-string score that occasionally gives way to the crackle of a bonfire.Commissioned by the Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, where it plays on a loop on a massive screen, themes of circularity and repetition permeate Sakakibara’s work. The rotating perspective gives the impression of a complete 360-degree turn across the film’s duration, and toy trains, people and fair rides appear to endlessly repeat their paths throughout. Perhaps embedded in this motion is an expression of the futility of fixating on regret. But, regardless of artistic intent, the resulting work contains a peculiar, poignant beauty, engrossing despite its pace due to the fine details that continue to reveal themselves as this small, self-contained world slowly turns. Continued here

S36

We Asked a Savile Row Tailor to Test All the 'Best' T-Shirts You See in Social Media Ads     Everyone has a favorite T-shirt. Most right now covet Jeremy Allen White’s from The Bear. For WIRED senior editor Jeremy Allen White, it’s one of his prized In-N-Out Burger designs—but lately, across his social media feeds, he’s been inundated by brands claiming he’s wrong and that they have unlocked the secret to creating The Perfect T-Shirt.Some use heritage as a sales strategy, others target body insecurities, while a new breed of online fashion brands are turning to high-tech lasers and adaptive algorithms to create custom T-shirts, tailored to you. But which is best? Continued here

S41

Ask Ethan: What drives the expansion of the Universe?     Even though it’s been nearly 100 years since its initial discovery, the expanding Universe still puzzles almost everyone who thinks about it. What causes the Universe to expand? Why did it start off expanding in the first place? What determines the rate of expansion, and how does that rate translate into something that we can actually go and observe? What do we mean when we say “the expansion is accelerating,” and why is that such a profound, revolutionary statement that we only started making in the 1990s? And, behind the scenes, what is the ultimate cause of each aspect of our cosmic expansion, and how confidently can we state such things?There’s a remarkable scientific story to be told here, and even seasoned scientists and science communicators frequently make mistakes when trying to provide answers to these questions. It makes educating the general public, especially young people, a particular challenge for father-of-a-curious-13-year-old, Philip Gee, who writes in to ask: Continued here

S24

Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language     The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups. Continued here

S13

Why a Business's Best Advocates Are Its Employees     Janice Bryant Howroyd, founder of ActOne, is known as the first Black woman to own and operate a billion-dollar company. She spoke at the 2023 Inc. 5000 Conference about the difference between marketing and advertising. Continued here

S40

David Cronenberg Is the Master of Grotesque Sci-Fi     Visit WIRED Photo for our unfiltered take on photography, photographers, and photographic journalism wrd.cm/1IEnjUHSlide: 1 / of 2.Caption: Caption: David Cronenberg on the set of Videodrome, 1983.Everett Continued here

S38

'Party Time!' Crypto Land Celebrates as Sam Bankman-Fried Is Found Guilty     At 7:33 pm eastern yesterday, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. The crypto industry exhaled.The verdict was a "huge relief," says market analyst Noelle Acheson, formerly of crypto brokerage Genesis. The fraud at FTX, which threw the crypto world into a spin last November, has "unfairly tainted" the rest of the industry, she argues, in the eyes of regulators and mainstream investors alike. But Bankman-Fried's conviction will go a long way toward "closing the book" on this unflattering episode, she says. Continued here

S3

E-Commerce Platforms Must Prioritize the Consumer-Influencer Relationship     In China, content-based platforms are generating a growing proportion of e-commerce, presenting a growing threat to established platforms like Alibaba and JD.com.  In this model, consumers buy products during their engagement with the content provider. Managing the platform to generate sales, therefore, is about enabling the right content to reach the right viewers. Savvy content-based platforms are leveraging AI to this trend and carefully curate their influencer relationships. Are the big retail platforms ready for this new model? Continued here

S16

How I Support Women at My Company     After years of not being heard elsewhere, women who join my company have a different experience. Continued here

S5

Why Design Thinking Works     While we know a lot about practices that stimulate new ideas, innovation teams often struggle to apply them. Why? Because people’s biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way. In this article a Darden professor explains how design thinking helps people overcome this problem and unleash their creativity. Continued here

S10

The Co-founder of Panera Bread Has a Great Recipe for Winning Over Investors     Panera Bread Co-founder Ron Shaich coached Johhny Pork Roll Founder John Yarusi on clearing one of entrepreneurship's greatest hurdles: proof of concept. Continued here

S60

The Theory of Hamas's Catastrophic Success     Three days after Hamas’s attack on Israel, I called the operation a “catastrophic success.” Now Hamas itself is saying something similar. A strange report in Middle East Eye (a publication funded by Hamas-friendly Qatar) quotes Hamas leaders admitting that they intended to commit heinous war crimes, but not at this scale. Hamas “had in mind to take between 20 and 30 hostages,” a source told the reporter. “They had not bargained on the collapse of [Israel’s] Gaza Division. This produced a much bigger result.”By “bigger result,” the source presumably meant the murder, torture, and dismemberment of more than 1,400 Israelis, Thais, Nepalis, and others. Another bigger-than-anticipated result might be the invasion of Gaza. Had the dead and kidnapped numbered in the dozens, Israel would have had to consider its options. Once Hamas broke the three- and then four-digit barriers, Israel’s commitment to destroy Hamas completely became inevitable. Hamas’s main military benefactor, Iran, tends to mount attacks just under the threshold of causing all-out war. That pattern keeps the geopolitical consequences manageable. Hamas’s attack crossed that line. Continued here

S31

Anna Banks, Senior Vice President, Personalization and Performance Marketing at Sephora     In this episode, Wharton experts speak with Anna Banks, senior vice president of personalization and performance marketing at Sephora.Wharton’s Barbara Kahn and guest co-host Anne Wilson speak with Anna Banks, senior vice president of personalization and performance marketing at Sephora about marketing and advertising at Sephora, as well as the beauty marketing space. Continued here

S64

There's No Third Rail Like the Middle East     Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.People all over the world are divided about the best way forward in the Middle East. As conflict devastates that region, how should citizens outside the Middle East handle their differences of opinion about the best way forward without tearing their societies apart? Continued here

S32

Anna Maria Coclite: Artificial skin? We made it -- here's why     Material scientist Anna Maria Coclite unveils "smart skin" — artificial skin technology that responds to touch, temperature and humidity like your very own. (It's actually even more sensitive than human skin!) From helping burn victims to paving the way to smarter, safer humanoid robots, Coclite highlights the broad-ranging potential of this innovation. Continued here

S14

Why You Should Invest in the U.S. Real Estate Market in 2024     Housing prices should continue rising, and luck favors those who are prepared. Continued here

S56

Photos of the Week:     A Halloween parade in New York City, All Saints’ Day observations in Lithuania, fall colors in Germany, continued destruction in Gaza, a foggy sunrise over the Great Wall of China, a bodybuilding championship in Kyrgyzstan, scenes from the 2023 Pan Am Games in Chile, and much more A woman walks the grounds in costume as revelers celebrate Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, on October 28, 2023. # Continued here

S7

The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs     The author, whose biography of Steve Jobs was an instant best seller after the Apple CEO’s death in October 2011, sets out here to correct what he perceives as an undue fixation by many commentators on the rough edges of Jobs’s personality. That personality was integral to his way of doing business, Isaacson writes, but the real lessons from Steve Jobs come from what he actually accomplished. He built the world’s most valuable company, and along the way he helped to transform a number of industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. Continued here

S63

The Great Social Media-News Collapse     Over the past decade, Silicon Valley has learned that news is a messy, expensive, low-margin business—the kind that, if you’re not careful, can turn a milquetoast CEO into an international villain and get you dragged in front of Congress.No surprise, then, that Big Tech has decided it’s done with the enterprise altogether. After the 2016 election, news became a bug rather than a feature, a burdensome responsibility of truth arbitration that no executive particularly wanted to deal with. Slowly, and then not so slowly, companies divested from news. Facebook reduced its visibility in users’ feeds. Both Meta and Google restricted the distribution of news content in Canada. Meta’s head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, noted that its newest social network, Threads, wouldn’t go out of its way to amplify news content. Elon Musk destroyed Twitter, apparently as part of a reactionary political project against the press, and made a number of decisions that resulted in its replacement, X, being flooded with garbage. As The New York Times declared recently, “The major online platforms are breaking up with news.” Continued here

S59

Here's What Biden Can Do to Change His Grim Polling     Whatever your theory, it should take into account a curious coincidence: how closely Biden’s approval numbers have tracked the numbers from former President Barack Obama’s first term. Obama’s numbers slumped in the second half of his third year, 2011. In the middle of that October, his disapproval number reached 41 percent, not very far off from Biden’s 37 percent at the same point in October 2023.The world of 2011 was a very different place from the world of 2023. The job market was weak, not red hot the way it is now. Immigrants were returning home, not arriving by the millions. China’s economy was booming, not slumping. Continued here

S54

Perfect Dark finally gets the full-featured PC port it deserves     For decades now, PC players who wanted to check out Rare's seminal 2000 shooter masterpiece Perfect Dark were stuck with the compromises inherent in emulating an aging title designed for very different hardware. Now, over 23 years after its release, Perfect Dark has gotten the full PC port it so richly deserves, complete with graphics and control updates that make the experience much more enjoyable for a modern audience. Continued here