Table of contents for November 2015 in Fast Company

This past summer, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann and cofounder Evan Sharp gathered the majority of their more than 600 employees in the office cafeteria to discuss how to make their workforce more diverse. Facing a room filled largely with white and Asian men, Silbermann and Sharp made a case for the importance of diversity in fostering creativity. More varied teams are more creative, they argued, and more creative teams lead to better products and greater success. With Pinterest rapidly expanding—it added more than 150 new employees in the first half of 2015— they had to move quickly to change the composition of the company. The gathering should have been a celebration. Nearly two years earlier, Tracy Chou, a female Asian-American programmer at Pinterest, had disclosed in a much talked-about blog…

Nursing a grande mocha latte in Starbucks after a frustrating hour of shoe shopping, Lucy Beard had an epiphany: Why was her coffee more customizable than her footwear? She decided she could do better. Four months later, the Zynga and Intuit veteran started Feetz, the first company to offer customized, fully 3-D– printed shoes for everyday wear. Due to launch early next year, Feetz remakes every step of the cobbler business. The company’s app translates photos of customers’ feet into virtual 3-D fit models. Users then select their color and style from among five offerings, including a Cubist flat (pictured) and a street shoe with a Flyknit-like weave. Within 24 hours, Feetz’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory prints the footwear from TPE, a rubbery material common in shoe soles. Initially, Feetz will…

Though Levi’s is practically synonymous with denim, the iconic brand has had to contend with increasing competition in recent years from boutique labels and the rise of athleisure. But Levi’s is fighting back with chief product officer Karyn Hillman, who spent the past two years updating the brand’s women’s collection. The project culminated this summer with the release of Lot 700, a revamped line of jeans with new styles and more forgiving fabrics. Here’s how Hillman got the denim maker to stretch its boundaries. Streamline the process Levi’s created a unique C-suite role for Hillman, who came from Calvin Klein and Gap. As CPO, she is responsible for both the design process and the production machine. Maintaining communication across the innovationfocused Eureka lab, where new fits are dreamed up; the…

BELINDA JOHNSON CHIEF BUSINESS AFFAIRS AND LEGAL OFFICER, AIRBNB Organizing principle “Rigorous prioritization. In the morning I look at my calendar and think about whether things that aren’t critical can be moved to the next week.” Key tool “Apple Notes. I use it all day long. As I’m going through my email, I’m either taking care of things in the moment or making [an entry] in Apple Notes that I need to deal with it later. At the end of the day, I go through all my notes and make sure I’ve addressed everything.” Strategy to beat procrastination “I have the opposite issue, which is that I try to get everything done. That ends up being an endless stream, so I have to force myself to take breaks.” Sleep schedule…

Key tool “I put everything I need to do on Google Calendar. There are different categories and a color code. My brain works in color: Green is active things I need to do, and once something is done, I change it to gray, which fades to the background.” Biggest productivity issue “When you hear that ding, you have this compulsion to check [your phone]. I already work too much. There’s nothing wrong with reading a magazine or a book or even staring into space.” Sleep schedule “I get six to seven hours, which is not terrible. Things are always racing in my head. The minute I go to bed, I have an idea that pops up. I don’t like to keep loose paper around, so I write in the iPhone’s…

THEY COMBINE SIMILAR ACTIONS. Jumping between activities that demand different mind-sets will slow you down. “Bundle tasks that require similar skill sets or states of mind,” says Alex Cavoulacos, cofounder and COO of career site the Muse. For example, she answers emails while catching up with her team through online chat, occasionally stopping to make a phone call. “Those are all short, communication-based tasks,” she says. THEY USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS. “If you don’t, you’re losing 30 minutes to an hour a day,” says Rob Shapiro, director of product strategy at media company Muck Rack, who uses X for select and E to archive. “My E key falls off my keyboard because I archive so often,” he says. THEY BREAK UP BIG PROJECTS. Three small tasks are easier to tackle than…

PIG NEWTON Louis C.K.’s production company, Pig Newton, appeared on the Most Innovative Companies list in 2013 for pioneering a directto-consumer model to sell his comedy specials and stand-up tickets, wresting distribution from middlemen. Now, C.K. is branching further out into Hollywood with his favorite funny people in tow. Shortly after breaking the hearts of fans of Louie—the FX hit that Pig Newton produces—by announcing an “extended hiatus,” the company confirmed it would produce three other comedies for the 2015–2016 TV season: Better Things, an FX show featuring Louie costar Pamela Adlon; a yet-to-be-named series for Amazon starring comedian Tig Notaro—whom C.K. helped rocket to fame by selling her work on his website—and Baskets, in which The Hangover star Zach Galifianakis will play a graduate of a Parisian clown school.…

The idea of off-the-grid living has a romantic, back-to-nature feel to it—but the reality is significantly more complicated if you want anything more than the most basic amenities. Dutch startup Sustainer Homes is attempting to eliminate at least some of the difficulty by producing the world’s first off-the- shelf, zero-impact dwelling. Set in a converted shipping container, the 323-square-foot space includes a bedroom, bathroom, full kitchen, and living room, all constructed from wood-free, Ecoboard panels. The entire thing costs $78,000, approximately $1,300 of which would be made up annually in heat and electricity savings. And because it’s completely self-contained, it can be shipped anywhere and set up in minutes. Several pilot programs, which will rent out Sustainer Homes to travelers in the Netherlands, are in the works for early next…

It was the young women Lena Dunham met on the road last fall on her sold-out, 12-city tour for her best-selling memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, who first lit the spark. Her millennial fans—earnest-minded, eager, spilling over with their own stories, and blissfully free of the toxicity that pollutes the average comments section of websites— convinced Dunham of the need for a different kind of gathering place online. In March, she emailed her best friend, producing partner, and Girls showrunner, Jenni Konner, with the wisp of an idea: They needed to create an Internet presence, something more than what was available to women at the time. Six months later, Dunham and Konner launched Lenny, the weekly online newsletter and website whose far-reaching goals include getting the first woman president…

When the small-batch spirits movement began gaining momentum about seven years ago, few were watching as closely as Åsa Caap, who was then the innovation director for Absolut Vodka. “There was a lot of talk about the growing craft and local trend,” she recalls. Rather than panic, Caap took it as a challenge. “I couldn’t get it out of my head: Why couldn’t there be a local brand that’s also a global brand?” Her solution: Our/Vodka, a network of semi-independent distilleries under the umbrella of Absolut’s parent company, Pernod Ricard. As CEO of Our/Vodka, Caap partners with entrepreneurs to help set up their facilities, which include tasting rooms and bars. The distillers run the operation as their own, creating vodkas based on the same Pernod Ricard formula, but with local…

ERIC GARCETTI MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES Since taking office in 2013, Eric Garcetti has tackled tough issues such as water conservation, raising the minimum wage, and homelessness. His next order of business? “Being a builder,” says the onetime international affairs professor and human rights advocate. “Building a great city, building an economy, building an infrastructure, and, ultimately, building people’s trust in government.” He’s also a delegator, a traveler, and a master napper. Strategy to beat procrastination “Schedule every second of every minute of every hour of every day.” Biggest productivity issue “Being reactive. That’s part of my job description: There is always going to be a fire, a shooting, a crisis, but you can’t let the urgent overcome the important.” Sleep schedule “The greatest gift I have is my ability…

KEN WASHINGTON VP OF RESEARCH AND ADVANCED ENGINEERING, FORD Key tools “Email is huge for me. It’s really important to have an email-management strategy. I color-code emails that are from key contacts and strategic partners, so when they come to me I see them in the massive digital pile. I’ve been developing and honing this system for the past 10 years. The second tool I use is paper. There’s no substitute for it. You don’t need a Wi-Fi hot spot to get it to work. It never runs out of batteries. I start each week with a list of the things I want to accomplish and a list of key actions.” Essential daily task “Interacting face-to-face with my team. When I’m [at Ford’s headquarters] in Dearborn, I consider it a…

MARCUS SAMUELSSON CHEF Sleep schedule “I’m about a seven-hour guy. I don’t do a lot of stuff [I used to do]. I don’t go to [chef hangout] Blue Ribbon at 3 a.m. I don’t drink a lot. I can’t wake up with a headache.” Staying connected “Every Wednesday, we have a team meeting at 10 a.m. No matter where I am in the world, I’m calling in. I have another conference call with my executive team on Tuesdays. Those are the centers of my week.” Email pet peeve “I hate [writing] long emails. You’re sitting there thinking, Is my tone right? Because there can be 50 ways of misinterpreting that email. Texting is better: ‘Let’s talk.’ Then you follow up with a conversation.” Work on weekends and vacation? “I don’t…

THEY FILE EVERYTHING. “Archive anything that’s an FYI or that maybe you need to refer to again,” says Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload. “Then move the rest of the items, which should be action items, to a to-do list and remove them from the inbox.” THEY UNSUBSCRIBE AND FILTER. Ditch recurring emails you rarely look at, like social media notifications. And set filters for the ones you do care about. “Any subscription or mailing list skips my inbox,” says Crush & Lovely’s Alexandra Lee. “On the commute home I sort through and see if there’s anything relevant.” THEY ANSWER QUICKLY. “If I can respond to an email in five minutes or less, I answer it immediately,” says Lee.—JH…

WHAT’S WORKING BuzzFeed The social-sharing news and entertainment behemoth is good at wooing millennials and has the size and scope to produce lots of Snapchatexclusive content. Its hilarious memes and highly snap-able content (such as a photo of a toilet with instructions to “Snap & draw yr scariest poop here”) make BF a Snapchat user’s BFF. Mashable Mashable is a newbie but already using its channel to highlight cool, usable tech in accessible segments, like App of the Day and Tech We Wish Existed. The design is compelling and sometimes cartoony, perfect for bite- size info. WHAT’S NOT WORKING Food Network The Guy Fieri network either tries too hard to target millennials—its “Penne for Your Thoughts” talking-pasta bit is as unfortunate as it sounds—or it doesn’t try hard enough, forcing…

WHAT’S WORKING Location Place-based filters are king here. Labels like “Coney Island” or “The Mission” help users create digital postcards and pay homage to their favorite places. It’s interactive, fun, and doesn’t feel like advertising. WHAT’S NOT WORKING Location-based advertisements McDonald’s has been testing filters to add to snaps taken at one of its restaurants. These cheesy overlays (such as hamburgers and fries as borders for users’ faces) are so lame that they almost work ironically. Almost. Movie ads The recent Zac Efron EDM DJ epic, We Are Your Friends, offered Snapchatters the ability to add giant headphones to a selfie. The movie went on to have one of the worst opening weekends in box- office history. A filter can’t disguise a terrible product.…

1862 Macy’s The iconic department store lays claim to the tradition of having a Santa-in-residence for children to visit during Christmastime, a move that helped turn holiday shopping into an experience for parents and kids alike. The following decade, Macy’s introduced another holiday hit, the Christmas window display. 1941 Gimbels During World War II rationing, the New York merchant stockpiled hard-to-get items like nylons to draw excited crowds, akin to modern product launches. 1965 Kmart Attention, Kmart shoppers: The discount department store became a pop-culture phenomenon with its Blue Light Specials, which involved store employees setting off blue police lights to announce spontaneous, instore sales. 1972 WilliamsSonoma Renown locally for its delicate curation and display of highend cookware, the popular San Francisco store became a national brand when it launched…

Business leaders of the future and future funders of those leaders, I have one request: Please take my money. I insist. I want to offer you my money in exchange for your services. Maybe you’ve heard of this: It’s called capitalism. I’m tired of you telling me my money is no good. Of you refusing to entertain the possibility that I might explicitly value your service. Mostly I’m talking to you, Internet businesses. For too long, people have embraced the compromised notion that free is not just an acceptable price but also the optimal one. Investors have clamored that user growth, not revenue, is what matters. Because why monetize now when you can figure it out later? And we, the people—readers, viewers, members, and users—have thought we were getting a…

APPS THAT BOOST YOUR CAPACITY 1 TO WRITE “The word-processing tools we’ve used for decades are relics. Quip strips out the features related to formatting text on paper, turning documents into collaborative web resources.” Kris Gale Cofounder, Clover Health 2 TO SELL “Lily Pad is the best (and most fun) salesmanagement tool on the planet and is changing the way we work.” Meg Gill Cofounder, Golden Road Brewing 3 TO FOLLOW THE NEWS “Wildcard delivers the top stories from vastly different outlets. It’s like drilling down tap by tap.” Franklin Sirmans Curator and department head, contemporary art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art “My wife and I frequently travel overseas. With Skybell, when someone rings our doorbell, we can see who it is, no matter where we are. It feels…

After Ellen Pao resigned in July, you came back as CEO, leaving the successful online travel company Hipmunk, which you also cofounded. Why did you return? I felt like I had a moral obligation to return to Reddit and try to fix it. It’s a very egocentric thought, but I truly believe that I’m the only guy in the world who knows Reddit well enough to actually fix it. One of the first things you did after your return was release a new content policy and ban a list of particularly offensive subreddits, including the racist /r/CoonTown. Is this part of the fix? I didn’t ban CoonTown for being racist. I don’t like that they’re racist. I find those users sickening, but that’s not why we kicked them off of…

Ted Chung is a man who’s thought long and hard about hot sauce. “It’s something I take very personally and spiritually,” says Chung, the founder of Cashmere, a marketing agency that targets multicultural millennials. As the son of Korean immigrants to the U.S., he noticed as far back as the 1970s that his parents put Tabasco on everything, wherever they ate. “They were longing for the spiciness that is common in Asian foods,” he says. Today, the Chungs don’t have to rely solely on Tabasco for their hit of heat. While Tabasco accounts for 18% of the hot sauce market, there are now hundreds of varieties available in the U.S.—from Tapatio to Texas Pete—and more than a few of them with foreign roots. If you’re looking to spice up your…

Though there’s still much to be learned about the power and potential of virtual reality—from the release date of upcoming VR headsets to how this nascent technology will shape entertainment, education, and social interaction—filmmaker Chris Milk has already arrived at one important conclusion. “Virtual reality, fundamentally, is a technology that removes borders,” he says. “Anything can be local to you.” Milk should know. The trailblazing director, who made his name creating cutting-edge, immersive music videos for bands such as U2 and Arcade Fire, recently founded the Vrse.works production company to push the boundaries of virtualreality filmmaking and offer tools and support to people interested in the medium. One of his first big projects: teaming up with the United Nations to create a series of short VR films highlighting some of…

LORRAINE TWOHILL SENIOR VP OF GLOBAL MARKETING, GOOGLE Go-to motivator “I get out of the building and go for a walk and look at the trees. Time to think is the scarcest resource in life. I use my drive to and from work to think, but it’s never quite enough. For me, going for a walk and being in fresh air is almost a form of meditation.” Email pet peeve “I still believe the best form of communication is talking. I know this is very antiquated. The most common email people get from me is two words: ‘Call me.’ ” Approach to prioritizing “Every morning, I look through all my emails and star the ones that I want to have cleared by the end of the day. I have made peace…

THEY HAVE A TO - DON’T LIST. It’s important to quickly identify tasks that aren’t worth your time. As a reminder, Fran Hauser, a partner at Rothenberg Ventures, keeps a running catalog of things she always hands off. “It’s really liberating once you set those filters,” she says. “It’s like a little formula.” THEY ARE SUPER CLEAR WITH INSTRUCTIONS. “I have an Excel spreadsheet with roles and responsibilities,” says 18F Consulting’s Kara DeFrias. “For a particular task, these are the duties.” THEY’RE THE RIGHT KIND OF SUPPORTIVE. Delegating only works if your employees can handle it. “Part of it is letting them fail,” says DeFrias. “It’s a great opportunity to let people grow. I’ll often say, ‘Talk to me about the thought process that got you to this decision.’ It…

JULIE LARSON-GREEN CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER, MICROSOFT Strategy to beat procrastination “I’m a huge procrastinator and a fairly lazy person. Being lazy makes me more efficient, because I try to find ways that I can do the best work in the most minimal amount of time. I also know that I need pressure to perform, and procrastination is one of the levers for creating that pressure.” Time-management system “I keep a lot in my head: people I need to talk to, projects I’m working on. I usually have a running tally of things I need to get done. But I also keep a lot in Outlook. Unread mail is my to-do list.” Media matters “I spend some time before I get out of bed looking at Twitter and Facebook, looking at…

WHAT’S WORKING Travelogues These immersive snaps make you feel like you’re part of the journey. This is particularly effective in the Around the World and Passport series, which offer a cool look into other cultures— and reassure us that young people party in every country. Cultural event coverage accomplishes the same goal: Spain’s La Tomatina festival, for example, showed participants doused red in overripe tomatoes, aka the World’s Biggest Food Fight. Music festivals From Coachella to FYF, music fests are the perfect setting for social media. People get to see clips of Seattle’s Bumbershoot headliner, Ellie Goulding, singing “Love Me Like You Do,” along with snaps of the alcohol-soaked revelry of these music marathons. In April, the three-day Live Story for Coachella brought in 40 million unique views. WHAT’S NOT…