Thursday 25th April 2024

Opinion | This Is What a Miracle Drug Looks Like. And It Only Costs $5 to Make.

The effects of semaglutide drugs won’t just be cosmetic

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Aristotle plus generosity: How to soften the hard-boiled leader

I was on a plane, the regular shuttle between Boston and Washington, DC, sitting next to Steve, who had been my mentor since the day I joined BCG (Boston Consulting Group). We were in the bulkhead seats, on the right side of the plane. Yes, I do recall this detail; it was a vivid moment for me. 

He and I were on our way to DC to house hunt and open BCG’s Washington, DC, office, an office that had been a year in the planning. He was a senior partner; I was a manager at the time. I had already moved my family to DC to start two of my children in school. Steve and his spouse were going to follow sometime in the fall. 

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The Universe might never run out of hydrogen

Nothing in this Universe lasts forever, no matter how large, massive, or enduring it appears to be. Every star that’s ever born will someday run out of fuel in its core and die. Every galaxy that’s actively forming stars will someday run out of star-forming material and cease doing so. And every light that shines will someday cool off and go dark. If we wait long enough, there will be nothing to see, observe, or even extract energy from; when it reaches a state of maximal entropy, the cosmos will achieve a “heat death,” the inevitable final-stage in our cosmic evolution.

But what, exactly, does that mean for the simplest atom of all: hydrogen, the most common element in the Universe since the start of the Big Bang? That’s what Bill Thomson wants to know, writing in to ask:

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"Cultures of growth": How small changes can build stronger, more successful teams

In 2011, software engineer and satirist Manu Cornet posted a cartoon on his blog mocking Microsoft’s culture of cutthroat competition under CEO Steve Ballmer. The cartoon depicted the company’s org chart as a collection of guns, each one pointing at another employee. It became a viral sensation.

Enter Satya Nadella. When Nadella became Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, he restructured the company’s culture around the psychological concept of a “growth mindset.” He built it into strategy decisions, resource allocations, and performance evaluations. He even revised the company’s mission statement to include “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

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Why a James Webb Space Telescope mystery doesn't (necessarily) break cosmology

On Christmas Day, 2021, an Ariane 5 rocket leaped from its launch pad in French Guiana. Perched on the rocket’s nose was the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The JWST was designed to perform several tasks, but one of the most important was to study the first stars and galaxies to come into existence. The telescope has performed magnificently; however, some troubling observations have been reported.

When the JWST took its first look at the sky, it seemed to have found galaxies completely unexplained by accepted theory. Astronomers worried that our understanding of the Universe’s early moments was fatally flawed and cosmology broken. Some press reports even hinted that the Big Bang was wrong.

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Exploited, Let Down, and Unfazed: What Small-Business Owners Are Saying About the Foxtrot Fallout

LaVitola gave a generic response, citing ambitious expansion plans for what began as a digital-only corner store and grew into a high-end convenience chain that secured $100 million in Series C funding in 2022. But on Tuesday, April 23, those plans ended with the abrupt closure of 33 Foxtrot locations (and two locations of upscale grocery store Dom's Market, which merged with Foxtrot into Outfox Hospitality at the end of 2023) across multiple states. The job loss is more than 1,000, according to Eater Chicago.

The Foxtrot co-founder might have given an uninspiring answer to a basic question, but his explanation of the company's business model -- and the contrarian beliefs Foxtrot was built on -- provides more insight into the current crisis the company's closure has created among small-business owners.


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Apple Just Announced Free Small-Business Training Sessions

The company announced on Wednedsay that it will host free training sessions titled "Made for Business" specifically for small business owners and by small business owners at Apple stores across the country. Set to launch during Small Business Week, which runs April 28 to May 4, the series will bring in leaders of small businesses to demonstrate how they use Apple products and services to run their businesses. Demos will also highlight how businesses can accept payments through Tap to Pay on iPhones, control how they appear on services like Maps and Siri, and manage company devices and cloud storage.

The six free events will take place in May at stores in Chicago, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., and sign-ups are open now. Along with highlighting Apple products, each session will have a local twist.


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'Do Not Use the Market as an Excuse' Says

Kyle Scott, a former NBC News producer, and Ryan Serhant, the star of Bravo's Million Dollar Listing, met in 2018 on NBC News while they were working on a digital commercial for Serhant's book, Sell It Like Serhant. It dawned on them to transform the book into a teachable real estate course, which launched a year later and earned $500,000 in its first two weeks, according to Scott. 

Over the past four years, the pair have learned that pretty much all business owners struggle with generating more clients and prospects for their business. So earlier this month they relaunched the platform as Sell It, with a new focus on coaching sales to all kinds of businesses--not just real estate businesses. Over 25,000 people in 128 countries have signed up for its content-to-commerce subscription courses, business events, and coaching resources, which start at $24 per month.


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Thought Leadership's Impact on Sidelined B2B Buyers

The B2B landscape is brutal. With a staggering 95 percent of businesses not actively exploring new solutions at any given time, and sales cycles stretching due to economic uncertainty, getting buyers off the sidelines is a must.

This is where thought leadership proves its advantage. It's a powerful tool that goes beyond brand awareness--it can prompt B2B buyers to rethink their challenges, sparking a first step towards considering new solutions.


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How TikTok Helped This Beauty Brand Break $100 Million in Sales

The Chicago-based beauty brand generated more than $100 million in annual revenue in 2023, a roughly 30 percent increase year-over-year, thanks in part to TikTok. Beachwaver has 1.2 million followers on the social media app, and sells products through its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop. The company is known for its curling irons with rotating barrels, but also sells flat irons, hairdryers and plant-based hair care products.

Beachwaver CEO Sarah Potempa and her sisters Erin Potempa-Wall and Emily Potempa co-founded the business in 2010 with just $20,000, and to this day have never taken outside investment. Sarah, who was working as a celebrity hairdresser at the time, was frustrated by the miscommunications that would happen when explaining how to style hair over the phone. Eventually, she drew a sketch of a curling iron that made the process easier by using a rotating barrel. Today, the company has 12 patents and 21 trademarks across its product line.  


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