Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i Fast Company

Amazon and Microsoft said they would pause or halt police use of their facial recognition technology, and IBM committed to getting out of the business altogether. At a time when business leaders and lawmakers are under pressure to eradicate systemic injustice and bias, Buolamwini’s work has never felt more urgent, and her approach—grounded in science and accessible to the masses—offers a blueprint for changing the status quo. Elsewhere in this lively package of profiles, meticulously curated by editorial director Jill Bernstein and associate editor Lara Sorokanich, you’ll meet the quiet forces behind earthshaking innovations—Lauren Gardner, creator of Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard, for example—and you’ll encounter big names blazing unexpected trails. I loved learning about musician David Byrne’s foray into feel-good journalism, and I hope you will, too. For readers…

No matter how many Clorox wipes they buy, or how far apart they place desks, schools will not be returning to normal anytime soon, due to continued public health concerns surrounding COVID-19 transmission. The grief of disrupted routines, short-circuited friendships, and delayed academic milestones that had sunk in by spring has been replaced with the stress of ongoing uncertainty. Among educators, a different kind of grief has been taking hold, as they’ve realized that school closures have created a variance in students’ progress that is so great, it renders grade levels almost meaningless. While some schools achieved a degree of success with video-based lessons and digital assignments submitted via tools such as Seesaw and Google Classroom, many struggled to adapt—and many students have fallen behind. In May, the nonprofit Northwest…

01 Waking Up "THE DIFFERENCE,” FLUME I came across this song in an AirPods commercial. I’ve loved everything Flume has put out. 02 Driving “AUDIO,” LSD I first heard this song when I took a trip to San Diego. On the way back, my friend played this song and I was hooked. 03 Working Out “EXCITEMENT,” TRIPPIE REDD, PARTYNEXTDOOR I’ve been a fan of Trippie and PND for a while now. This is a great collaboration. 04 Hard at Work “HOT LIKE SAUCE,” PRETTY LIGHTS This song is mostly instrumentals, so a great song to work to. 05 Get Psyched "HYFR,” DRAKE (FEAT. LIL WAYNE) Drake and Lil Wayne always bring the heat together. I’ve loved them since middle school. 06 Mellow Out "DREW BARRYMORE,” SZA SZA has the voice…

In the midst of a pandemic, economic upheaval and needed societal change, businesses are struggling to navigate one of the most challenging times in modern history. Few, however, are looking to the nonprofit sector for inspiration—but they should, says Richard C. Shadyac Jr., president & CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Charitable organizations are dealing with considerable challenges, and Shadyac has seen peers in the nonprofit industry respond with tremendous creativity. “It has accelerated the imperative for nonprofits to innovate for the preservation of our industry, the well-being of our workforce—which employees one in 12 people in the U.S—and our world-changing missions,” he says. St. Jude is no stranger to forging new trails. When it was founded in 1962, the premise was…

Erica Esrick & David A. Williams Attending physician, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center; senior vice president and chief scientific officer, Boston Children’s Hospital Sickle cell disease is the most common inherited blood disorder in the U.S., affecting more than 100,000 Americans, including 1 in 365 African Americans. The disease affects hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body, causing the cells to take on a crescent, or sickle, shape. These deformed cells are rigid and break apart easily, which leads to anemia, organ damage, and bouts of severe pain.“Sickle cell is challenging because it’s such a protean disease,” says David A. Williams, senior vice president and chief scientific officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. The only effective treatment has been a bone marrow transplant,…

LOS ANGELES GEORGIA HARDSTARK & KAREN KILGARIFF Executive producers, Exactly Right Podcast vet Georgia Hardstark and comedian Karen Kilgariff’s true-crime podcast, My Favorite Murder, boasts more than 30 million monthly listeners. Since launching, the podcast has spawned a global tour, a New York Times best seller (Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered), and a podcast network, called Exactly Right. In December 2019, the duo signed a deal with distributor Stitcher, worth roughly $10 million, to grow Exactly Right further. They weren’t exactly sure at first how to proceed in the era of COVID-19. “We were like, Oh my God, do we keep recording?” Hardstark says. “But we realized that being able to give people [an] escape is a helpful thing.” LOS ANGELES MATTHEW PELTIER Founder and CEO, Community Social media…

When brands hire WillowTree to build leading-edge digital products, they expect a lot. They want innova tive ways to meet the needs of both end users and the business. “We realized that we have to do the innovation work on our own dime,” says WillowTree CEO Tobias Dengel. “Then we can pitch clients on what we’ve done and how it can help them.” For inspiration on building an intentional, sustainable approach to innovation, Dengel and his colleagues looked to famously creative companies like Google and 3M, which give employees latitude to pursue ideas that pique their interest. But WillowTree’s leadership wanted an emphasis on teamwork and a tight focus on problems that needed solving. “What’s unique about WillowTree is that our team members are all onshore, and when we’re not…

T-Mobile has long positioned itself as an outsider and disruptor in the wireless industry. The “Un-carrier” moniker adopted by T-Mobile in 2013 was a nod to its non-traditional approach, which prioritized customer service in an industry that too often seemed to treat customers as antagonists. T-Mobile’s customer-focused innovation efforts have helped set the company apart from its competitors—and have earned it a spot on Fast Company’s list of the Best Workplaces for Innovators. Callie Field, executive vice president of customer care at T-Mobile, explains the evolution of Team of Experts, the company’s signature customer service program that launched nationwide in 2018. The goal: to give customers a more personalized—and human—call-center experience. What’s the idea behind Team of Experts? We wanted to put customers at the center of the experience. As…

When it comes to innovation, more voices often lead to better ideas. That’s why MRM, a customer relationship marketing agency—part of the advertising giant Interpublic Group and the McCann Worldgroup network—doesn’t limit brainstorming to its own staff members. The company’s LAB13 innovation studio relies on co-creation from clients and outside experts, an initiative that helped earn MRM a spot on Fast Company’s list of Best Workplaces for Innovators. Here, Global Chief Executive Officer Kate MacNevin discusses the benefits of the in-house in novation incubator. Innovation often happens behind closed doors and away from clients’ eyes. Why involve them in the process? The benefit of bringing in the client early in the process is that they feel some ownership—they feel like part of the solution. They become an enabler and a…

David Byrne Creator and performer, American Utopia In an era plagued by cynicism and division, David Byrne’s exuberant, theatrical Broadway concert, American Utopia, brought an unapologetic appeal for optimism and unity earlier this year—personified by its diverse lineup of international musicians and the relentlessly reassuring onstage presence of Byrne himself. Couched within its unbridled exuberance was a serious message of civic duty: If you want an American utopia, you have to vote. To drive the point home, Byrne teamed up with the nonprofit HeadCount to register people during the show’s limited run (a more extended run had been planned for the fall; a filmed version will air on HBO later this year). In the meantime, Byrne launched a solutions-based online magazine, Reasons to Be Cheerful, to offer up a much-needed…

When Dell Technologies began planning the 25th edition of its premier business laptop, the Dell Latitude series, the company’s engineers were given a substantial challenge: Enhance the Latitude’s design and performance while also advancing Dell’s global sustainability goals. After months of R&D, including tests of more than 200 material combinations, the team delivered. The silver jubilee edition is lighter, stronger, and boasts substantially more reclaimed content, including a new reclaimed carbon-fiber technology that uses waste from the aerospace industry. “Twenty years ago, did any of our engineers or designers say, ‘I’m going to build a Latitude from recycled carbon fiber?’ Probably not,” says JJ Davis, senior vice president for global communications at Dell, which was named one of Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators. “But they’re given permission to take…

“It’s time to build.” So declared venture capitalist Marc Andreessen with elder-statesmanlike flourish in a widely circulated essay in April, just as the novel coronavirus began to overwhelm hospitals around the world. Housing, education, manufacturing, transportation—in all of these areas, he argued, we are suffering from “our widespread inability to build.” Andreessen’s solution was simple: “We need to want these things”; we need to find the “will” and the “desire” to build automated factories, internet-tutoring marketplaces, and supersonic aircraft. He did not mention software, the subject of his 2011 manifesto, “Why software is eating the world” (in which he augured that tech would disrupt the very same industries he now criticizes for their complacency). On Twitter, techies swooned. “Hard to read this and not get amped,” one wrote. Meanwhile, on…

There are few things that Eben Bayer hasn’t tried to make out of mushrooms. Over the past decade, the CEO of incubator Ecovative, which develops commercial applications for mushroom materials, has made packaging, textiles, insulation, and furniture out of fungus. This fall, through spinout Atlast Food, Bayer is launching an even more ambitious product: mushroom bacon—the first, he hopes, of a whole new category of mushroom meat alternatives. Bayer sees mushrooms as an untapped resource for a number of industries. Researchers can easily extract cells of a specimen and grow them in bulk quickly, affordably, and in specific shapes. Ecovative’s early work focused on using mushroom cells in composite materials, growing mycelium with wood chips or hemp stock to create replacements for Styrofoam and building insulation. This material has been…

Instagram @HASHTAGBOOKED It’s run by two actresses—Danielle Pinnock and LaNisa Frederick. They show what it’s like to be an actor on the grind, hustling for work and doing auditions. Website VULTURE.COM I tend to check it every day. It’s a good roundup of pop-culture news. Twitter @RGAY Roxane Gay is so funny and smart. Her tweets are always a good time, and she gives insight into the process of being a writer, which I think is comforting and inspiring. TV Show KILLING EVE So fantastic! Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are incredible. I love seeing two talented women putting on a master class of acting from week to week. Also, I love Black-ish. “I never knew how much I needed a candle lighter until I bought one. It’s far less…

01 The Pleasures of Cooking for One: A Cookbook JUDITH JONES Judith Jones—a legendary editor and author—inspired the name for Great Jones [my cookware company]! This is my favorite of her books. 02 Goodbye, Vitamin RACHEL KHONG If I ever write a book one day, I’d like for it to be something like this. It’s an honest and charming portrayal of what it means to age. 03 Women on Food CHARLOTTE DRUCKMAN This powerful, inclusive anthology explores gender bias, the intersection of fashion and food, and the underrepresentation of women of color in the restaurant industry. (Disclaimer: I am a contributor.) 04 Truth & Beauty ANN PATCHETT I feel this book deserves more attention! If you’re a fan of My Brilliant Friend, you’ll like this, too—it’s a great study of…

Lauren Gardner Codirector of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University “I DON’T WANT THIS JOB.” It was late March, and Lauren Gardner, an engineer and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, was questioning her decision to create an online dashboard for tracking COVID-19 cases and deaths around the world. She and her team had spent a long night in January scanning local news sources in China, intending to create a data set that other researchers could utilize. Before posting a link to their work on Twitter, Gardner had decided to visualize the data on a map in order to make it easier to parse. “Humans are horrible at statistics,” she says, and “presenting raw numbers is really tricky.” The response was electric. In a matter of weeks,…

Abhay Parasnis CTO, Adobe AS ADOBE’S CTO, ABHAY PARASNIS CHARTS the future of the company’s signature tools, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat—some of which are older than many of the millions of people who depend on them. This involves applying ever more sophisticated AI to new challenges, as in creating a video version of Photoshop’s crowd-pleasing Content-Aware Fill feature, which can perform feats such as erasing people from an image. “We spent five years saying, ‘How can we replicate that magic but in real time, on moving frames?’ ” Parasnis explains. The answer began as a technology experiment called Project Cloak and wound up as a new feature in the After Effects postproduction software, in 2019. Along with keeping Adobe’s mainstays vital, Parasnis is responsible for taking the company…

BOB KAIN Founder and CEO, LunaDNA Bob Kain did pioneering work for biotech giant Illumina that paved the way for a $250,000 DNA- sequencing platform. When he left, in 2014, he wondered, once genomic mapping became affordable, how would doctors and scientists make good use of that info? Kain developed a novel health-data platform, called LunaDNA, which allows patients to upload their anonymized genetic details to help researchers address some of the most pernicious human diseases. Unlike with Ancestry and 23andMe, people who upload genetic Information (or their electronic health records) to LunaDNA can earn dividends from any commercial entity that uses their Information for approved research. They can also elect to participate In Individual studies. “Money is a short-term motivator,” says Kain. “What we can do is allow them…

Twyla Tharp Dancer, choreographer, author “I’ve always approached my time on this planet as a progression,” says 78-year-old modern dance icon Twyla Tharp. “It isn’t about chasing youth. It’s about preserving vi tality from day one all the way out.” In her fourth book, Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life, published ast October, Tharp explains how to do just that, and she re mains proof that the lessons work: Tharp spent February and March 2019 working with the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia, as it prepared to put on her 1976 piece Push Comes to Shove. That March, she staged an evening of some of her biggest hits at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She also choreographed a new ballet for the American Ballet Theatre, called…

Ben Volk Director of global payment acceptance and customer experience, Amazon For Americans without a debit or credit card, it’s nearly impossible to shop online. Amazon’s Ben Volk has devised a way for the company to accept cash, something it has technically done since 2017, but customers had to preload money into their account. With Amazon PayCode, which launched in the U.S. in September 2019, customers can pay with cash at partner Western Union after completing online checkout. Purchases arrive on their doorstep days later. “A lot of it had to come down to trust,” Volk says. (In certain countries outside of the U.S., roughly one- third of first-time Amazon customers opt to use PayCode.) Today, working with the USDA and 36 states, Volk has been piloting a way for…

When it comes to solving the problem of global hunger,you might not think about blockchain as a solution. But Building Blocks, a project supported by the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) Innovation Accelerator, hasdemonstrated the technology’s value in providing cash assistance to hungry people. Here’s how it works: In refugee camps in Jordan and Bangladesh, Syrian and Rohingya refugees shop for food at grocery stores inside the camps. As they check out, they“pay” without physical cash, but rather from a secure digital wallet. Blockchain does the rest. As a result, more donor money goes directly to food assistance. Bold ideas like Building Blocks are the stock in trade of the WFP Innovation Accelerator, which was named oneof Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators. Building Blocks was rapidly tested and scaled…

Just a few years ago, teletherapy—the practice of doing therapy via phone, video, or text—was regarded as an unproven mental health treatment. But strong consumer demand for all forms of telemedicine (estimated to surpass $130 billion by 2025) has led to a quadrupling of venture funding in the space in the past five years. The popularity of these apps skyrocketed during the COVID-19 shutdown, as in-person visits ceased and mental health declined nationally. Remote therapy is now offered by traditional healthcare networks, stand-alone apps, and as part of employee assistance programs. Industry Growth VC investment in mental health startups by year (in millions) APP USAGE Telehealth company MDLive reports that in 2020, virtual behavioral-health visits increased Valuations The top apps by valuation (at press time) Validity A 2019 Harvard Medical…

Celebrated mid-century modern designers Charles and Ray Eames filled their house with objects found on their travels, including a simple and elegant wooden house bird that they brought back from the Appalachian Mountains. Now, Swiss family-owned furniture brand Vitra has replicated the American-folk-art-inspired sculpture in solid alder wood. The bird comes in a black or walnut finish with a steel wire base. ($270, vitra.com)…

What is your best habit, and what is your worst? I maintain a 20-minute daily meditation practice, but I have a weakness for very dark chocolate. What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? I read things unrelated to our day-to-day business, such as National Geographic, The Economist, or The New Yorker, or I go on long bike rides. Is there a business-person you admire? Dr. Roy Vagelos, former CEO of Merck. He continues impacting human health today. The ways he put people over profit helped set a strong standard and reputation for the industry. How do you unplug? I take all my vacation days, which helps me recharge. When travel isn’t possible, skipping stones with my youngest son on the Rhine helps me unplug lately. We’re getting pretty…

People around the world are living longer, healthier lives. So, it’s no surprise that the ways older Americans live, retire, and enjoy their later years is changing. AARP has transformed in recent years to keep up with those changes, pivoting to become a future-focused nonprofit that helps its 38 million members—and all people 50 or older—reimagine their lives. “We have the opportunity to live longer than our parents or our grandparents,” says Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO of AARP. “What worked in the past isn’t good enough for us to meet our members’ needs in the future.” To achieve this transformation, AARP has expanded its reach, building a nationwide presence in every state to help handle a wider range of aging-related issues. One of its key initiatives is the AARP Innovation…

Nearly 200 years ago, John Deere wasn’t a household name. John Deere was a prairie blacksmith who used a pol ished steel saw blade to craft a better plow. His idea revolutionized farming and served as the inception of Deere & Company, now one of the world’s leading providers of advanced products and services for agriculture and construction. In the same revolutionary spirit, John Deere in 2017 acquired a Silicon Valley startup, Blue River Technology, to craft smarter machines. Computer vision and machine learning can distinguish weeds from crops and spray herbicide only on the offenders. This precise weed control has the potential to cut herbicide volumes by 90%, reducing costs for farmers and benefiting the environment. “That’s a future we all want,” says John Stone, Deere & Company’s President,…

Thomas Rimmele Director, Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, National Solar Observatory WHEN THE DANIEL K. INOUYE Solar Telescope came online in January after 25 years in the making, its lead developer, astronomer Thomas Rimmele, was “pacing through the room as if I was waiting for a baby to be born.” Immediately, the Maui-based telescope began capturing images of the sun, offering unprecedented clarity and detail of the surface’s hot plasma and massive convection cells that will give Rimmele and other scientists the ability to measure the sun’s magnetic field for the first time. This will help predict solar weather, which until now has been difficult to study “We’re 50 to 100 years behind the capabilities of Earth-level weather predictions,” Rimmele says. Solar weather can have devastating consequences if it hits…

Lindsay McCormick Founder and CEO, Bite Toothpaste Bits While traveling for work as a TV producer two years ago, Lindsay McCormick grew horrified by the number of travel-size toothpastes she was throwing away and began tinkering with alternatives. “At the time, this was just a hobby,” she says. After buying a tablet making machine and selling her chewable product via Etsy and a website, McCormick was featured in a viral Women’s Health video. Her direct-to-consumer subscription business, Bite, did more than $3 million in revenue in 2019. Despite several acquisition and investment offers (including one from Mark Cuban when she appeared on Shark Tank) and the introduction of competing products from Colgate and Unilever, McCormick and cofounder and COO Asher Hunt have retained 100% ownership–enabling them to make environment-first choices…

With more than 150 years in business, Royal Bank of Canada understands what it takes to stay relevant and successful. The ability to pivot is a key ingredient—and is why the bank launched RBC Ventures, to focus on products and Services that go beyond banking. RBC Ventures is led by Mike Dobbins, RBC’s chief strategy and corporate development officer, who founded it with a small group of innovators from within and outside the bank. RBC Ventures serves as an internal incubator for the parent bank—Canada’s largest based on mar ket capitalization—working to nurture and support viable ideas from ideation to concept to reality. The goal: to build defensibly different products that improve lives, and, hopefully, draw new customers to RBC. Most of RBC Ventures’ projects are digital. They include Services…

WINNER AbCellera VANCOUVER Together with Eli Lilly and NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center, AbCellera’s Pandemic Prevention Platform team combined microfluidics, data science, machine learning, bioinformatics, and genomics to bring the first COVID-19 antibody to clinical trials in under 90 days, a process that typically requires three to six years. In June, Eli Lilly began two Phase 1 clinical trials of COVID-19 antibodies isolated by AbCellera. “People have pushed themselves to the very limits of their endurance in this race against the virus,” says AbCellera head of R&D Ester Falconer.…