The holidays are a great time to catch up on reading, and think beyond day-to-day issues. Here are 10 of our favorite business and productivity books from 2015 that will help you see larger trends–and your own career–in a new light. advertisement advertisement 1. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Tech writer Ashlee Vance gained access to serial entrepreneur Elon Musk without promising to make him look good, and this biography paints a delightfully nuanced picture. At times he’s a “sci-fi version of P.T. Barnum,” talking of saving humanity while he’s got dessert lingering on his face. Other times, he’s “the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted.” The American economy has long grown based on the dreams of unreasonable people, and Vance argues that Musk is the next in that line. 2. The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute It’s hard … [Read more...] about The 10 Best Business And Productivity Books Of 2015
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5 Ways To Wrap A Present That Don’t Involve You
As “on-demand” companies compete to deliver our food, run our errands, do our laundry, and even pack our suitcases, pundits are wondering whether we’re really this lazy. Our best advice? Ignore them–at least when it comes to obligatory holiday gifting. advertisement advertisement Thanks to a long season of very liberal venture-capital funding, there are many ways that you can get your gift wrapping done without lifting a finger (when it comes to tape and scissors, that is–you may still have to tap your smartphone). We have compiled them here. All you have to do to get started is answer a simple question: Just how lazy are you? If possible, I would prefer this to involve zero decisions: Terrific. We’re on the same page. On Black Friday this year, more people shopped online than in stores for the first time, which means it’s likely you’re already tuned in to step one of this gift-wrapping scheme: shop online. Amazon offers gift … [Read more...] about 5 Ways To Wrap A Present That Don’t Involve You
Bike Sharing, Driverless Cars, And Hyperloops: 2015 In Transportation
2015 was the year we continued to see new types of transportation, including self-driving cars and buses, all kinds of drones, and even futuristic trains, like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop. advertisement advertisement It was also when we started to see transport become better integrated. Bike-share companies looked to become part of wider transit systems (rather than just standalone services). Uber started to share data with cities, auguring a time when ride-sharing become part of public networks. And, we saw plenty of new apps and sites allowing people to move more seamlessly between modes. For any given journey, we can now understand the best way to get from A to B. There were some failures as well. Leap Transit, an upmarket private bus service in San Francisco, went out of business (not that anyone minded too much). Generally things got better. As we gather and crunch data more effectively, we should be able to move more quickly and with less hassle, even as cities become … [Read more...] about Bike Sharing, Driverless Cars, And Hyperloops: 2015 In Transportation
How You’ll Search For A Job In 2016
Many people take the New Year as an opportunity to start fresh in a new job. The good news is that there will be plenty of openings to suit a wide range of seekers as CareerBuilder reports that over 100 occupations in the U.S. have more job posting activity than hiring month to month and a recent report from career site Dice finds a record 78% of hiring managers anticipate more hiring in the first half of 2016 compared to the second half of 2015. advertisement advertisement For those looking to hire, Dice found that companies are taking a greater interest in candidates with less experience. More than a quarter (27%) of hiring managers said they plan to hire entry-level candidates and 62% said they’re looking for those with two to five years’ experience. Finding and applying for those open positions may be taking on a different look in 2016. For example, the Boston Consulting Group and Recruit Works Institute surveyed 13,000 individuals from 13 countries and found … [Read more...] about How You’ll Search For A Job In 2016
This Is One Of The Women Behind Hollywood’s Inclusion Rider
Kalpana Kotagal can vividly recall the first moment she felt the slap of racial discrimination. “I was probably 9 or 10 years old, definitely old enough to have a sense of race,” she says. At a now-defunct pizza place in Cincinnati in the 1980s, where she and her family were “decidedly brown,” they waited (and waited) in the vestibule while other parties were seated ahead of them. advertisement advertisement What happened next would inspire Kotagal to join forces with Stacy Smith from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni of Pearl Street Films, who had been working for a few years around the idea of an inclusion rider, to craft it in 2016. It had a moment in the spotlight when Frances McDormand added those words to the end of her acceptance speech at the 90th annual Academy Awards. “I remember very distinctly my parents’ discomfort and embarrassment and anger kind of mounting,” she explains. They … [Read more...] about This Is One Of The Women Behind Hollywood’s Inclusion Rider
