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CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer! S1S2The Art of Asking Smarter Questions - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)   With organizations of all sorts facing increased urgency and unpredictability, being able to ask smart questions has become key. But unlike lawyers, doctors, and psychologists, business professionals are not formally trained on what kinds of questions to ask when approaching a problem. They must learn as they go. In their research and consulting, the authors have seen that certain kinds of questions have gained resonance across the business world. In a three-year project they asked executives to brainstorm about the decisions they’ve faced and the kinds of inquiry they’ve pursued. In this article they share what they’ve learned and offer a practical framework for the five types of questions to ask during strategic decision-making: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. By attending to each, leaders and teams can become more likely to cover all the areas that need to be explored, and they’ll surface information and options they might otherwise have missed.
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S7S8 | � | | S9Everyday Philosophy: "Should I disinvite my bigoted friend from group trips?"  I have a group of cycling friends and we all go mountain biking together away about twice a year. I get on well with everyone apart from [one guy], who recently ruined the last trip for me by being antagonistic. He’s an ex-soldier and holds very right-wing views. I’m very liberal. Mike knows this and all through the weekend he kept saying slightly bigoted things about gay and trans folks and about migrants within earshot of me, trying to get me to bite. I didn’t but it did piss me off and marred the whole weekend. Can I politely exclude Mike from future trips because I enjoy the company of everyone else?
I think we’ve all been here, Mike. I’m not one for biking holidays, but I’ve had my fair share of family get-togethers, school reunions, and office parties where “slightly bigoted things” have “marred the whole weekend.”
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S10How we all got into debt  Student loans continue to burden adults decades after they’ve left school, and credit card debt haunts many Americans. On the flip side, many of us make leveraged investments in our homes, taking out mortgages to buy houses that we expect to appreciate in value. In other words, debt structures American lives in myriad ways. But, as historian Louis Hyman writes, this is a relatively new thing.
In the nineteenth century, Hyman points out, if an individual needed credit, they turned to friends, loan sharks, or local merchants. For corner grocers and country stores, these loans were money-losing propositions with no interest charged. Any institution with a lot of money lent it not to consumers but to businesses.
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| � | | S11Philosopher Nick Bostrom's predictions on life in an AI utopia  In 1954, psychologist Muzafer Sherif engineered a tribal war between two groups of 11-year-old boys in two camps inside Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. They were given tasks, rewards, and objectives — the kind of thing that would be prime-time reality TV these days. Before long, the two camps had established tribal identities. They had their own culture, norms, and behavioral standards. They were The Eagles and The Rattlers. And, other than a few insults and scowls, the two camps lived in peace.
But after five days, Sherif upped the game. He had the two groups compete for food. He limited their resources. It was a fist-swinging, curse-hurling, dust cloud of a mess. When a few punches landed, the adult researchers had to step in, adults with notebooks holding back furious Eagles and violent Rattlers.
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S12 | � | | S13The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  In too many companies, an innovation team is allowed to pursue its own agenda and imagine itself to be a separate island from the rest of the company. The results are always disappointing: a lot of creative ideas, but a failure to deliver meaningful growth. The root problem is the disconnect between strategy and innovation. To succeed, corporate innovation needs to be bounded by a clear set of strategic priorities that matter to the business. And it needs to play to the strengths of the firm — whether data, customer relationships, or supply chains — that will enable it to outcompete others attempting the same idea. The author offers five steps to help embed strategy into the innovation process.
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S14 | � | | S15S16 | � | | S17S18S196 Strategies for Improving Your Business Reputation Online  Every business fears that a single angry and unfair customer can jeopardize their business by a very negative post on Yelp, Better Business Bureau, or one of the hundreds of other consumer complaint and review sources on the internet. Most owners and leaders don't even know how to keep track of what people are saying about them on the web, much less how to respond or remove it.
Web reputation management, both business and personal, has become a top priority initiative. On the personal side, these items can kill your career or family life, so I recommend that you start by Googling your name regularly, to see yourself as others see you. Luckily, the basic principles for reputation management are the same for both business and personal environments:
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S20This New Startup Wants to Help Founders Find Angel Investors  Johnson is a serial entrepreneur with two multi-million dollar exits for her businesses (No Subject) and Create & Cultivate, while Vuong, a digital product leader, helped scale the real estate company Open Listings to $4 billion in transactions. Their new business, Los-Angeles-based Cherub, is a new platform aimed at helping startups and angel investors connect.
Cherub, which officially launched on March 8, helps entrepreneurs get introduced to potential angel investors via a dating app-like interface and machine learning--"think Raya for deal flow," says Johnson. Its founders raised $1.1 million in--you guessed it--angel investments last year to bring the app into existence.
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S21How to Manage a Cross-Functional Team  Cross-functional teams — those with people from different departments who have varied expertise — are becoming more common, as is the rise of project-based work arrangements. Early in your career, you may even find that your first “real” leadership role is managing a newly formed, cross-functional team for a specific and short-term project. There are a few key actions new leaders can take to get their team off to a great start.
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S22Master the Art of Asynchronous Communication  With the rise of remote and hybrid work, the number of employees collaborating across time zones is growing. If you accept a position on a global team, particularly in a hybrid or fully remote environment, you should not expect to work the same hours as all of your peers. As a result, you will need to learn an increasingly important skill: asynchronous business communication. Here are a few practices that can help.
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S23S24What Is the Role of Customers in the Gig Economy?  Wharton professor talks about why the relationship between customers and gig companies is an asymmetrical power relationship.
Lindsey Cameron, Wharton assistant professor of management, joins the show to discuss the gig economy and how it pits customers against workers.
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S25Is Influencer Marketing Worth It? Wharton professor discusses the difference between "mega" and "micro" influencers in ad campaigns.
Brands pay millions for mega-influencer endorsements, but new research from Wharton’s Ryan Dew and Raghuram Iyengar finds more followers don’t always yield the biggest bang for the buck.
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S26S27How the cosmic microwave background proves the Big Bang  Less than a century ago, we had many different ideas for what the history of our Universe looked like, but shockingly little evidence available to decide the issue. Hypotheses included suggestions that our Universe:
That last example corresponds to what we know today as the hot Big Bang, while all the other challengers (including newer ones not mentioned here) have fallen by the wayside. Since the mid-1960s, in fact, no other explanation has held up to the observations. Why is that? That’s the inquiry of Roger Brewis, who would like some information about the following:
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S28Do you try to avoid your boss? For Isaiah Berlin that's a big problem  Every now and then, I fantasize about the end of the world. I imagine what it would be like if it were just me left (and a few loved ones, I suppose). I run through all the fun to be had — the fast cars I’d drive, the mansions I’d commandeer, and the luxury clothes I’d wear. There’d be no need to go to work, no need to worry about money, and no need to navigate the delicate waltz that is social nicety. My imagination drifts into the contented liberation of apocalyptica.
But, after a while, I know things would grow stale. I’d be free from the constraints of certain things, but not free to do others. There are no laws or expectations, and nothing more than that either. It’s a good way to understand 20th-century theorist Isaiah Berlin’s positive and negative freedom. Learning about Berlin’s distinction not only reveals an important philosophy; it’s also a great way to understand human flourishing more broadly in every walk of life.
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S29The 6 Best Small Business Week Deals for Entrepreneurs  Spanning from April 28 to May 4, Small Business Week is a celebration of American entrepreneurs hosted by the Small Business Administration. The event provides small businesses visibility and highlights how these companies have impacted their local communities. Founders can participate in the SBA's free virtual summit from April 30 to May 1 with Zoom sessions hosted by companies like Visa, T-Mobile and Amazon.Â
Businesses looking to expand their phone plans can take advantage of T-Mobile's new "Business Unlimited Package." The deal offers phone lines at $45 monthly with a minimum of six lines. For Small Business Week, new small businesses using this package can add 10 or more lines to get a credit of $1,000 via 36-monthly bill credits. Businesses also have the option to earn up to $1,000 via 24-monthly bill credits and use it for any new smartphone per line when they add 10 lines.Â
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S30Legal Ban on Worker Noncompetes Faces Uphill Battle  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's ban on "noncompete" agreements commonly signed by workers is likely vulnerable to legal challenges, experts said, as some courts have grown increasingly skeptical of federal agencies' power to adopt broad rules.Â
The commission in unveiling the rule on Tuesday said agreements not to join employers' competitors or launch rival businesses suppress workers' wages and stunt their mobility and job opportunities. About 30 million people, or 20 percent of U.S. workers, have signed noncompetes, the agency said.Â
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S31Tesla's Plan for Lower-Priced Models Takes a Page From Detroit's Past Strategies  Elon Musk's new plan to use current product lines as the basis for new affordable vehicles--rather than springing for all-new models--follows the playbook of Tesla's old-school Detroit rivals, as some Tesla investors and analysts see it.
The shift toward incremental improvement, mirroring a common strategy of Ford and General Motors, suggests the future of car-making that Musk has promised to disrupt may still look a lot like the past.
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S32How This Small Business Hit $1 Million in Revenue With a Simple Service: Kids' Gym Class  He thought his kids' schools didn't have effective resources for teaching PE online--in fact, those resources didn't seem to exist at all. Instead, the schools had a patchwork of YouTube videos and online curricula, but nothing like the online resources that had been developed for academic subjects.
Titus, who was working in finance at the time, spotted an opportunity and in 2020, along with a group of friends and fellow parents, began dreaming up Hiveclass, a company that would provide high-quality sports and PEÂ education over video.
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S33The FCC Just Restored Net Neutrality. One Lawmaker Says It's Especially Important for Startups  Net neutrality aims to preserve online free expression by directing internet providers to treat all online communications equally That means internet service providers can't favor one web page over another. For example, an internet service provider couldn't slow down internet speeds for eBay web traffic and offer a quicker connection for those perusing Amazon's web pages.
"It is about ensuring that monopoly or duopoly broadband providers cannot squash competition, squeeze consumers, and squish the little guy," Markey told Inc. "Net neutrality is especially important for startups that could otherwise be shoved into online slow lanes, a serious disadvantage in today's digital world."
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S34More Bad News for the Fed: Its Favorite Inflation Gauge Increased More Than Expected in March  Inflation is showing little signs of cooling. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve's favorite inflation gauge, held steady last month, and that's still too hot for comfort.
The core PCE price index, which strips out the more volatile prices of food and energy, rose by 0.3 percent in March, in line with the 0.3 percent measured in February, according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday. Over the past 12 months, the core PCE index has increased by 2.8 percent, keeping pace with data published in February. Economists had forecasted an annual increase of 2.7 percent.Â
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S35Salesforce Co-Founder Parker Harris on Why AI Keeps Him Up at Night  While the Salesforce co-founder has directed leaders at the enterprise software behemoth to move as quickly as possible to integrate AI into its products, Harris is concerned about balancing the need for speed with the company's track record delivering high-quality solutions to clients. Striking that balance has even kept him up at night.
"I have anxiety that the speed at which AI is going, I've never seen anything like it," Harris said at Salesforce's World Tour event in New York City on Thursday. "I feel like we've gotta go faster. We can't hold back, we can't worry. And yet, we have to worry, because our customers trust us to help them in the best way possible."Â One of the questions he said he's been asking himself when it comes to AI is, "How do I go as fast as possible and not make mistakes along the way?"
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S36More Women Work in Nonprofits. So Why Do Men End Up Leading Them?  The term “glass escalator” refers to the finding that men in female-dominated occupations often experience a faster and smoother rise to the upper levels of leadership than women. Why does the male advantage persist? Systemic power dynamics and gender stereotypes are pervasive across industries. Because of these stereotypes and incorrect assumptions, even in fields where there is an abundance of qualified women for leadership roles, men continue to be singled out and fast-tracked. The author offers several best practices that have been shown to tamp down the escalator effect and promote gender equality.
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S37How to Answer an Open-Ended Question from a Job Candidate  Interviewers should prepare for interviews just as thoroughly as candidates do. Being equipped with compelling stories and setting aside dedicated preparation time, such as 30 minutes beforehand, allows interviewers to mentally prepare and be fully present during the interview. Like with candidates, it’s not only the content of what is said that matters, but also the manner in which it’s conveyed. Demonstrating enthusiasm for the company and the position can leave a lasting impression on candidates, instilling confidence and enthusiasm in their decision-making process.
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S38Sale or No Sale, TikTok Will Never Be the Same The end of TikTok has begun. As the dust settles from a week of shockingly fast legislative action by the US Congress, it's clear that TikTok next year will look much different from the TikTok we're using today.
When President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion dollar foreign aid package on Wednesday, it brought to life a nightmare that has haunted TikTok for more than four years. If TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, refuses to divest its stakes in the company, the United States will ban the app nationwide. The signing started the clock, giving TikTok 270 days to find a new owner. (As The Washington Post's Cristiano Lima-Strong noted, TikTok's time will run out the day before Inauguration Day 2025.)
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S3914 Best Car Phone Mounts, Chargers, and Accessories (2024): Wireless Chargers, MagSafe Holders, and Dashcams 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 WIRED
Getting ready for a drive? Whether you use your phone for navigation, music, or podcasts—or are just bringing it along for the ride—the right accessories can make it the perfect passenger. A good car mount will keep it within easy reach and in view, so you don't need to dangerously fumble for your handset and take your eyes off the road. You'll also want to keep your device charged. Add a dashcam to document your trip. We have tested a range of mounts, chargers, dashcams, and other accessories that might be useful for your daily commute.
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S4016 Best USB-C Cables (2024): For iPhones, Android Phones, Tablets, and Laptops 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 WIRED
The humble cable is often the simplest and fastest way to charge your devices or move files from one device to another. But these ostensibly straightforward power and data conduits come in many shapes and sizes. Even cables that appear identical may perform differently when you plug them into your phone or laptop. Various connectors, specifications, charging rates, and data transfer speeds make for a confusing, messy scene.
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