Bamboo Innovator

How Ben & Jerry’s brought maverick ideas to mainstream business; As Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, turns 63, Brad Edmondson explains why the company is proof that profits and purpose can co-exist

How Ben & Jerry’s brought maverick ideas to mainstream business
As Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, turns 63, Brad Edmondson explains why the company is proof that profits and purpose can co-exist
Brad Edmondson
theguardian.com, Tuesday 18 March 2014 18.02 GMT

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of ice cream makers, Ben & Jerry’s. Photograph: Felix Clay
The story behind Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and its 35-year struggle to achieve “linked prosperity” started with a simple but radical idea that everyone and everything the company touched should benefit from its profits. The sale of the ice cream makers to Unilever in 2000 therefore was a surprise twist to those who knew the two founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

Read more of this post

The possible pitfalls of ‘Liberation Management’

The possible pitfalls of ‘Liberation Management’
by Nicolas Arnaud, Celine Legrand, Colleen Mills | Mar 19, 2014
In LM, a widespread shake-up of how employees interact brings with it not just new ways of innovating, but also new challenges to the very nature of how the firm functions

Read more of this post

When The Best Employees Quit, Can You Handle The Truth?

George Anders, Contributor
3/18/2014 @ 9:00AM |71,916 views
When The Best Employees Quit, Can You Handle The Truth?
When prized employees leave a company, bosses almost always act surprised. From the comforts of the corner office, it’s easy to believe that you’re providing a great work environment and all the career-advancement opportunities that workers or managers might want. But maybe senior executives just can’t handle the truth.

Read more of this post

10 Things Only Lousy Managers Say

Liz Ryan, Contributor
3/19/2014 @ 1:03AM |14,461 views
10 Things Only Lousy Managers Say
God bless the bad managers we’ve struggled under, those toads and zombies who taught us so many valuable leadership lessons (all lessons of the How Not to Lead variety). We still remember those managers years later, with their tempers, idiosyncracies and neuroses.

Read more of this post

17 Successful Entrepreneurs Share Their Best Productivity Hacks

17 Successful Entrepreneurs Share Their Best Productivity Hacks
RICHARD FELONI STRATEGY MAR. 19, 2014, 1:17 AM
Starting and maintaining a small business takes an exceptional amount of work, and time is a precious commodity. That’s why most successful entrepreneurs have developed a few tricks along the way to increase their productivity and effectiveness.

Read more of this post

7 Philosophies That Have Made Apple Designer Jony Ive A Legend: He makes products for people who care. “Our success is a victory for purity, integrity – for giving a damn.”

7 Philosophies That Have Made Apple Designer Jony Ive A Legend
DRAKE BAER STRATEGY MAR. 18, 2014, 11:30 PM
Sir Jony Ive has led Apple’s design team since 1996. Along the way, he’s become a living legend in the design world, dreaming up the candy-colored iMac, the music industry-disrupting iPod, and the world-changing iPhone — to name a few of the products that earned him his knighthood.

Read more of this post

Gorgeous Maps Of The World Made With Iconic Local Foods

Gorgeous Maps Of The World Made With Iconic Local Foods
HARRISON JACOBS THE LIFE MAR. 18, 2014, 11:35 PM

China is made up of various types of noodles.
New Zealand photographer Henry Hargreaves has always liked to play with his food. In his newest collaboration with food stylist Caitlin Levin and typographer Sarit Melmed, Hargreaves takes playing with food to another level by creating maps that use the iconic foods of the countries and continents that they depict.
Before he was a photographer, Hargreaves worked in the food industry and found himself fascinated by how what people ordered reflected their personality. In many ways, Food Maps similarly reflects how what we eat connects with who we are.
Hargreaves, Levin, and Melmed shared some of their playful maps with us here, but you can see more of Hargreaves and Levin’s work at their website. Note that each map is made using real food.
France is made out of bread and cheese.

The United States is made out of different types of corn and corn products.

Japan is made out of different types of seaweed.

Australia is made from “shrimp on the barbie,” a traditional Christmas food.

Africa is made of bananas and plantains.

India is, of course, made of spices.

The United Kingdom and Ireland are made out of biscuits.

South America is made up of citrus fruits, such as lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits.

New Zealand, Hargreaves’ home country, is constructed out of kiwis. Though not native to the country, they have been hugely popular in the country since they were first introduced in the early 1900s.

Similarly, while tomatoes are not native to Italy (they actually come from South America), they have since become central to Italian cuisine.

Coming Soon, Maybe: ‘Knowledge Pills’ That You Eat To Automatically Learn Anything

Coming Soon, Maybe: ‘Knowledge Pills’ That You Eat To Automatically Learn Anything
DYLAN LOVE TECH MAR. 19, 2014, 1:25 AM
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, appeared on stage in Vancouver at TED’s 30th anniversary event last night and made a number of predictions about what technology will do over the next 30 years. Via Ars Technica, here’s his most startling one:

Read more of this post

How A Powerful Mathematical Principle Spelled Doom For Absurdly Large Centipedes

How A Powerful Mathematical Principle Spelled Doom For Absurdly Large Centipedes
ANDY KIERSZ SCIENCE MAR. 19, 2014, 2:27 AM
One of the great things about mathematics is its ability to bring together apparently completely unrelated phenomena, and explain them all with the same simple concept. It turns out that a very basic mathematical idea — power laws — describes the economics of pizza, limitations on the sizes of insects, income inequality, and countless other things.

Read more of this post

12 Things Successful People Do In The First Hour Of The Workday

12 Things Successful People Do In The First Hour Of The Workday
JACQUELYN SMITH CAREERS MAR. 19, 2014, 9:00 PM
The first hour of the workday is critical, since it can impact your productivity level and mindset for the rest of the day.

Read more of this post