The Intricate Makeshift Money Germans Relied On Between World Wars
From gizmodo.com: State-issued currency is the scaffolding upon which capitalism was built, but it’s always been prone to mayhem. For instance in 1920s Germany, extreme inflation forced German businesses to actually print millions of their own customized paper bills. Now largely forgotten, this notgeld, or “emergency money,” was once ubiquitous—amounting to an ornately-decorated I.O.U. in […]
Baratunde Thurston and Brian Janosch Discuss Their New Web Series about Crowdfunding
From Slate.com. Baratunde Thurston is former director of digital for The Onion and the author of How to Be Black. Brian Janosch is currently writer-at-large at The Onion. Slate spoke with them about their new web series, Funded, which tells the stories of small businesses that have used crowdfunding to get off the ground. Slate: What’s the idea behind Funded? Baratunde Thurston: We—meaning Cultivated Wit, a company I helped […]
The Two Most Important Words in Business
By Robert A. Eckert from the Harvard Business Review: When I arrived at Mattel, the company was losing almost a million dollars a day, the bonus pool was empty, and equity awards were underwater. I believed that those challenges were surmountable. On my first day, at a “town hall” gathering in the cafeteria, I said, […]
From A List Apart: A response to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s condescending “Seven Rules for Managing Creative People”
By Cennydd Bowles from A List Apart: Childish, inaccurate, bizarre, and condescending? Perhaps—but you can’t just ignore articles like that. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s Seven Rules for Managing Creative People1 has caused some serious ripples. The article sets lofty standards for missing the point, misrepresenting creative industries to the point of infantilization. At its nadir—“Creatives enjoy making […]
Flashmob Recreates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shopping Mall
The European banking sector may still be on shaky footing. But it’s not stopping European banks from putting together a good flashmob. Last year, the Spanish bank, Banco Sabadell, brought together 100 professional musicians and singers to perform the anthem of the European Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Symphony No. 9. And movingly so. It […]