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Brief thought exercise: have you ever stopped and realized that the reason you’re not a chimp is 1/50th of your DNA?

I read Guns, Germs and Steel on the first intercontinental flight I ever took (which sadly didn’t happen until I was 28), and while that’s maybe not the best flying-over-the-Atlantic reading material, it was pretty captivating (it has sold millions of copies). I came… Continue Reading

Arturo Vittori, Andreas Vogler, and whether Warka Water could be the future in the developing world

The state of running water and sanitation in the world isn’t great, and while big names like Bill Gates and Matt Damon have donated time and money to the efforts, they can still be costly. The newest version of the Gates toilets… Continue Reading

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“Remember that I’m doing you a favor:” The Maddie Yates YouTube suicide note

Maddie Yates, a high school student in Louisville, KY, posted a video to YouTube on Monday around 6pm. It was, essentially, a suicide note; she killed herself minutes later, apparently. In the “world of social media” (which makes me sound… Continue Reading

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Let’s compare the 10 largest occupations in America in 1999 and 2013, shall we? (Pause for sigh.)

Before, we’ve talked about where jobs might be come 2022 — so eight years or so from now. But what’s happened to jobs in the past decade or so? Well, check out this chart, courtesy of Pew: Here’s the original… Continue Reading

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Could you apply blue ocean marketing/consumer-type strategies to the idea of leadership?

You might have heard of “blue ocean strategy.” It’s a very b-school term in some ways, but basically it means this: rather than going head-to-head with your competitors on everything, carve out “blue oceans” of untapped market space. It’s all documented… Continue Reading

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Could a Boston-based company called XL Hybrids help change the world (and the climate)?

XL Hybrids is a company out of Boston that, right there on their homepage, will promise a 20 percent reduction in urban fuel consumption. The business media is on board: Fast Company just had them as the third-most innovative energy company in… Continue Reading

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Could we be nearing the end of ‘death by PowerPoint?’ (Could PowerPoint itself be dying?)

Here’s a lame story by way of intro: last fall, when I was in my first semester of graduate school, I really wanted a gig at Microsoft. (News flash: I did not get one.) I heard that a recruiter from… Continue Reading

Beef is now $5.28/pound, the highest since 1987. Is that going to shift habits over the next decade?

Just in time for the summer grill-out season, beef prices are at their highest point since the late 1980s. And here’s the really good news! Everything that’s produced is being consumed, said Kevin Good, an analyst at CattleFax, a Colorado-based information… Continue Reading