American cities are on the rise. Their resurgence is about building a strong sense of community around smart planning and innovative ideas, like using crowdsourcing as an urban improvement tool. For instance, take Jersey City. Once known for its deteriorating rail yards and rampant corruption, it's…

Corporations spend vast amounts of money researching “employee engagement” and worrying about how to shift the distribution in one direction or another as part of some sort of change initiative. There are good and bad, qualitative and quantitative ways of studying employee engagement. You can study…

[Photo: Flickr user Nora Hollstein ; App Photo: Flickr user Seattle Municipal Archives ] A network of far-flung employees wasn't what Amir Salihefendic had in mind when he created Todoist more than eight years ago. Salihefendic, who fled Bosnia when he was six years old, was just a college student…

Dear Detroit, My name is Cassie and I'm from a small town in North Carolina, where our largest building is Wal-Mart. I have always wanted to experience life in a big city, and you did not disappoint, but rather exceeded my expectations. You see, I was expecting a city filled with broken dreams and…

I first met Maartje Smit in a hostel in Bogotá, back in 2013. I hung out with her and her Australian friend Choppy for a few nights and we all ended up becoming friends on Facebook. When I got home to the Netherlands, there was nothing but rain—unlike on Maartje's wall , where there seemed to be…

“I PROPOSE, if and when found, to take him by his beastly neck, shake him till he froths, and pull him inside out and make him swallow himself.” It is not often that Silicon Valley’s denizens quote P.G. Wodehouse. But this is what Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm,…

Howard Schultz doesn’t have all the answers. It’s early April, just five days after a police officer fatally shot Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, in South Carolina, and the Starbucks CEO is on stage at Spelman College, the historically black institution of higher learning for women. He’s here…

Last week, as Uber battled a media firestorm after a senior executive talked of investigating unfriendly journalists and a company manager actually used its “God View” feature to track the comings and goings of a reporter, Airbnb welcomed more than 1,500 of its most productive providers to its…

May 14, 2015 1:33 p.m. Updated By Email Print Detroit Nonprofits Michigan Photo by Matrix Human Services Marcella Wilson Matrix Human Services President and CEO Marcella Wilson plans to step down from her position in February, after leading the organization for the past decade. She is not retiring,…

A striking finding in a recent Inspector General report revealed that the U.S. Department of State spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook "likes" in the past two years, effectively buying fans. In order to bolster its presence on Facebook, the State Department paid about $630,000 for…

T hough this is not the way I would usually describe my career, one way of looking at it is that I spent my first 20 working years trying to raise money, and the next 15 trying to give it away. The transition, which took place when I left Human Rights Watch in 1996 to found the United States…

OPEN IN APP Is this playlist safe for work? March 19, 2015 | 81 tracks | 103 4 | Stats スクリーンミュージック Duke Ellington Fred Astaire in memoriam in memory of grandmother mixtape Like d Liked! Share this mix with friends: Liked! Share this mix with friends:

The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors today announced the Documentary and Education programs among this year’s winners. The nine honorees are the final winners named as part of The Peabody 30, and include documentaries about the Islamic State, the Church of Scientology and singer Nina Simone. The…

Writing When You Might Be Wrong I get asked for blogging tips a lot by other investors or entrepreneurs, most of whom aren’t writing consistently and imagine they should be. “Time” is usually the blocker that everyone identifies but when you press on what exactly that means, it’s less about nothing…

Photography: Liz Caruana The Idea: In its early years, Automattic relied on traditional résumé screening and interviews to do its hiring. But over time Mullenweg came to focus on tryouts, in which final candidates are paid to spend several weeks working on a project. Automattic employs 230 people.…

Ira Glass, host and producer of NPR’s “ This American Life ,” recently visited the Aronoff Center in Cincinnati for a show about reinventing radio. I was so eager to attend, yet not sure what to anticipate. I grew up listening to NPR. My kitchen was filled with the voices from All Things Considered,…

In life, storytelling is pervasive. One reason stories are popular is that learning through them is more memorable and retrievable than pure lecture-based learning—We naturally store, index, and retrieve information in the form of stories. Most of us would rather listen to someone tell a compelling…

Journalism Feb 12 , 2015 Share Posted by Knight Foundation Photo credit: Jamelah H. on Flickr.com This post was updated on Feb. 24, 2015. On Feb. 25 we will open the next Knight News Challenge with this question: How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and…

Shipping made easy We pick up, package, and send your stuff for the lowest price. Sign up Servicing San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago iOS App Store Google Play How it works We come to you Our couriers come to your door to pick up what you need to ship. Packaging by professionals Get…

The planet’s best-selling author since 2001, James Patterson has more than 300 million copies of his books in print, an army of co-writers, several TV deals in the works, and an estimated income of $90 million last year alone. But where’s the respect? Exploring the contradictions of this one-man…

Photo: PAUL SAKUMA / PAUL SAKUMA / Associated Press 2000 Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Image 1 of 5 Peter Thiel (left) and Elon Musk, X.Com Corp. chairman and CEO respectively, show the cards they use for what became PayPal in 2000. The initial goal was to create an Internet currency to replace the…

This post is part of ONE’s “Reporter Perspectives: Covering Africa” blog series. This month, we sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof to discuss how he approaches writing about Africa. “What connects people to issues is individual stories.” Nicholas Kristof, sitting across…

Industry City, Brooklyn Spencer Platt/Getty Images Corporate finance is not the stuff of kitchen-table conversations. The terminology surrounding it is a bit obscure. And a lot of the key data isn't officially tracked by the government or published in an easily accessible way. But these four…

Buy Photo Detroit’s institutions, public and private, must make investments that give young people a future, Hadden says. (Photo: Robin Buckson, The Detroit News) Buy Photo 108 CONNECT 2 COMMENT EMAIL MORE Detroit appears to have successfully navigated the bankruptcy process. Its balance sheet is…

Last year at this time, Product Hunt didn’t exist. Its founder, Ryan Hoover , was the Director of Product at gaming company PlayHaven and an active blogger, attracting a loyal but modest following. He couldn’t have anticipated what was to come. Kicked off in November 2013, Product Hunt has seen…

You Are Not Late Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 1985 when almost any dot com name you wanted was available? All words; short ones, cool ones. All you had to do was ask. It didn’t even cost anything to claim. This grand opportunity was true for years. In 1994…

Rodrigo Canales of Yale’s School of Management is one of Poets&Quants’ 40 best professors under 40 Rodrigo Canales Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior Age: 38 Institution: Yale University, Yale School of Management Since: 2008 Before current institution: MIT Hometown: Mexico City Marital…

Govtech Fund founder Ron Bouganim (Credit: The Govtech Fund) The American technology innovation ecosystem is, in some ways, a well-oiled machine. A smart person or a group of smart people come up with an idea and then go get funding to turn it into a business. In the best cases, they end up not only…

7/24/17 Editors Note : This post has been updated to be one central place with all you need to know about Social Objects! more thoughts on social objects Oct. 24, 2007 Anyone who has heard me speak publicly lately will know that I’m currently very focused on the “Social Object” idea, which I was…

This story is part of Governing In medicine they do clinical trials to determine whether a new drug works. In business they use focus groups to help with product development. In Hollywood they field test various endings for movies in order to pick the one audiences like best. In the world of public…

[Image: Flickr user Robert Baxter ] This article contains interviews with cofounder and CEO of Dragon Innovation Scott N. Miller and cofounder and CEO of Hammerhead Navigation Piet Morgan. Hardware projects aren't just capital intensive—they take manufacturing experience. Unfortunately for most…

Disruption is one of those words that's been defined, reintrepreted, and unpacked so many times that I have tried to banish it from my vocabulary, except in etymological discussions like this. There are those "disruption cultists" for whom the word is a signifier for all things good and holy about…

Twitter: You can use this to type 140 characters WhatsApp: Just like SMS but doesn’t cost much Airbnb: Rent out your spare mattress Uber: Just another taxi company to many Over the last week, I’ve been hearing people in the startup world repeatedly scratching their heads on how a simple app like…

“Whatever you think about McDonald’s—it’s really, really good at not being bad.” I could listen to and chat with Rory Sutherland, the Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, for hours. This video, from edge.org , shows you why. Here are some excerpts. Game Theory is the Key … The other problem in…