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131

THE RISE OF ALGORITHMS

AERIAL NEW YORK

How they came to dominate our lives

Manhattan shot from above

FASHION BLOGGERS

3D CLOTHING

What big publishers have to fear

Printing a new pair of shoes

REBUILDING LEGO How Lego came back from the brink, and why thatâ€™s awesome

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

The business of life & living

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OBAID HUMAID AL TAYER MANAGING PARTNER & GROUP EDITOR IAN FAIRSERVICE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR GINA JOHNSON GROUP EDITOR MARK EVANS marke@motivate.ae EDITOR MATTHEW POMROY matthew.pomroy@motivate.ae SENIOR ART DIRECTOR SARA RAFFAGHELLO sarar@motivate.ae DESIGNER RALPH MANCAO ralph@motivate.ae SUB-EDITOR SALIL KUMAR salil@motivate.ae EDITORIAL ASSISTANT LONDRESA FLORES londresa@motivate.ae GENERAL MANAGER – PRODUCTION SUNIL KUMAR sunil@motivate.ae PRODUCTION MANAGER R. MURALI KRISHNAN muralik@motivate.ae PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR VENITA PINTO venita@motivate.ae CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER ANTHONY MILNE anthony@motivate.ae PUBLISHER JAYA BALAKRISHNAN jaya@motivate.ae GROUP SALES MANAGER PORTFOLIO & INTERNATIONAL MICHAEL UNDERDOWN michael@motivate.ae

Emirates takes care to ensure that all facts published herein are correct. In the event of any inaccuracy please contact the editor. Any opinion expressed is the honest belief of the author based on all available facts. Comments and facts should not be relied upon by the reader in taking commercial, legal, financial or other decisions. Articles are by their nature general and specialist advice should always be consulted before any actions are taken. All dollar prices throughout the magazine refer to US dollars. Published for Emirates by

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North Island in the Seychelles has been the chosen destination for British royalty and A-list film stars, but amid the five-star luxury is an island with eco credentials

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NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

CONTENTS UPFRONT

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

A circle where most of the planet lives

HYGGE

The Danish word you should live by

LIVING

Doping happens in sport, and also in the workplace

STYLE

OFFICE DOPING

3D CLOTHING

Why your next pair of shoes might be computer printed

INSIDE THE IPHONE

Men’s and women’s looks for the autumn season

A BRAND YOU SHOULD KNOW

The Swedish brand you should be investing in

SENNHEISER HD800

What’s inside the new iPhone and what does each part cost Apple?

Arguably the best pair of headphones in the world

VERMOUTH

THE $30 BRICK

Clever marketing or proof that some people will buy anything?

Misunderstood but in fashion once more

86 MINIMAL WATCHES

If you’re looking for a casual watch, go minimal

34,932 copies January - June 2016

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

CONTENTS FEATURES

ALGORITHMS RUN OUR WORKING LIVES

Employers are turning to mathematically modelled ways of sifting through job applications. Even when wrong, their verdicts seem beyond dispute

HOW TECH IS KILLING RESTAURANTS

Tech companies in Silicon Valley have disrupted the local restaurant industry to the point where some even fear robots may take their jobs

FASHION BLOGGERS

Vogue magazine took a swipe at fashion bloggers, but are they really scared of the new breed and is this the democratisation of fashion coverage?

NEW YORK FROM THE SKY

A collection of spectacular images from photographer Jeffrey Milstein capturing iconic places in Manhattan from directly above

HOW LEGO REBUILT ITSELF

The Danish company went from being one year short of bankruptcy to the biggest toy company in the world. Every business can learn from how they did it

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The new sphere of influence The majority of the world’s population are in the circle marked on the map opposite. And their number, and influence on the course of the planet, is rapidly growing

By 2025, the Chinese city of Shenzhen will be home to more than 12 million people. In 1950, it was a fishing village with only 3,148 citizens.

These 19 countries represent more than half of the world’s population China India Indonesia Bangladesh Japan Philippines Vietnam Thailand

anghai 51 Sh nd o n 9 Lo York w

Five others

South Korea

Delhi 79 aka 74 Dh bai m u

Myanmar

Malaysia Nepal

North Korea Taiwan 0

0.1B 0.2B 0.3B 0.4B 0.5B 0.6B 0.7B 0.8B 0.9B 1.0B 1.1B 1.2B 1.3B

= 3,777,580,230

Delhi’s population is currently growing by 79 people per hour, Dhaka by 74, Mumbai at 51. In China, Shanghai’s population increases by 51 new residents every hour. Comparatively, London and New York grow by nine and 10 per hour.

NOVEMBER / INFOGRAPHIC

ISSUE 131

MEGACITIES This circle contains 22 of the worldâ€™s 37 megacities, which each hold at least 10 million people

Shanghai, China 35,500,000

Jakarta, Indonesia 31,500,000

Karachi, Pakistan 24,300,000

Seoul, South Korea 24,170,000

Manila, Philippines 22,710,000

Delhi, India 21,753,486

Beijing, China 21,516,000

Mumbai, India 20,741,000

Wuhan, China 20,600,000

KyotoOsaka-Kobe, Japan 20,260,000

There are currently more people living and working in this circle than outside of it. And of the top 10 fastest growning cities (2000-2010) only Lagos, Nigeria, is outside this zone. Karachi alone grew 80.5 by per cent in that time period.

Infographic: Ralph Mancao

Tokyo, Japan 38,800,000

15 Guangzhou, China 19,910,000

Chongqing, China 19,384,100

Chengdu, China 18,427,500

Dhaka, Bangladesh 18,250,000

Tianjin, China 15,469,500

Bangkok, Thailand 15,350,000

Kolkata, Shenzhen, India China 14,766,000 12,250,000

Harbin, China 11,635,971

Bengaluru, India 10,576,167

Lahore, Pakistan 10,551,472

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NOVEMBER UPFRONT / SPEND

ISSUE 131

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HP PAVILION WAVE PC Smaller, material-covered, triangular in design, high-spec and with a 360° audio system from B&O Play. You’ll want this desktop PC on top of, rather than under, your desk. $550, hp.com

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isn’t just for looks – it also has its own microphone, a trigger to start and stop recording, a cold shoe for mounting accessories, and interchangeable 58mm lenses. $199, cinebody.com

by Leica. Despite the retro stylings and non-digital medium, you can still change focusing distance, toggle the flash, and adjust image brightness to be higher or lower among other settings, but it’s really about a fun instant camera (with colour or black and white film at around $15 for 10 shots) from the iconic brand. $299, leica-camera.com

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / MARKETING

TECHNOLOGY | GLOBAL

Get happy, get hygge What we can learn from the Danes. Words: Jon Horsley

D 18

anes are some of the happiest people walking the planet. They have topped the list of the United Nations World Happiness Report in 2013, 2014 and 2016, meaning they are either one of the most content nations on Earth or have a genetic predisposition to fake smiles and lying on surveys. At the bottom of this report lies poor old Burundi. So what is the difference between Burundi’s capital Bujumbura and Denmark’s Copenhagen? A GDP per capita that’s over 100,000 times higher is almost certainly the right answer. But another answer you could give is hygge (pronounced “hoo-gah”). It’s a Danish concept – though the original word is Norse – that has no easy translation into other languages. It means cosiness – but not just a physical sensation, a spiritual feeling of being happy and looked

after. In The Book Of Hygge by Louisa Thomsen Brits it covers “a feeling of belonging and warmth, a moment of comfort and contentment”. “It’s not something you can buy,” says Bronte Aurell, a chef and author of Fika And Hygge (fika is Swedish for coffee break). “You can’t just get a candle with ‘hygge’ written on it and expect to have a cosy time. It’s about comfort, cosiness. It can happen anywhere but you have to be in the moment. I’d say that you can’t have mobile phones* on during a meal, be looking at them and expect it to happen.” The activities that are generally listed as hygge do have a group feel. There is an element of belonging. Think of family meals, particularly at Christmas, coffee and cinnamon buns inside on a cold day, mulled wine or cider shared under a rug at candlelight. In summer, picnics, barbecues and group bike rides can all be very hygge.

It’s all lovely stuff and makes you want to fly straight to Copenhagen before you can say “Little Mermaid”, to see if you can get some hygge in your life from these gloriously happy people. But there is one stark problem with the Danes and hygge. In The Little Book Of Hygge, Meik Wiking states that “Danes are not good at inviting new people into their friendship circles. In part, this is due to the concept of hygge; it would be considered less hyggeligt if there were too many new people at an event”. Or to put it another way, one of the reasons the Danes are happy is because they’re introvert to the point of not really liking outsiders. This could be one reason why Denmark ranked an uhyggelige 65th out of 67 countries on a survey of expats’ quality of life. Hygge hurdle apart, the Danes are certainly doing some things right. But there are also other possible reasons for their place at the top of the contentment billboard. They also eat the most confectionery in the world and drink at least twice as much coffee as most of the rest of the world (12kg per person per year compared to 5kg in espresso-loving Italy). So maybe if you can’t find your hygge heaven you could try eating a lot of sweets washed down with a lot of coffee. Perhaps that will lead you to the secret of happiness, lovely, jittery happiness. * Aurell may be unaware of the Julesange And Hygge (Carols And Hygge) app available for free on Google Play and in the Apple store.

Other tough-to-translate terms Fernweh (German) A term meaning the opposite of homesick. A desire to travel, meaning that you’re desperate to visit new places. Toska (Russian) Varying from the depths of spiritual depression to the ennui and boredom of being trapped at home with nothing to do.

Tsundoku (Japanese) The act of buying a book and leaving it unread. Normally with a pile of similarly untouched books.

Prozvonit (Czech) The act of calling a mobile but not letting it ring more than once, so that the person phoned will call you back and pay for the call. Friolero (Spanish) Someone who is susceptible to the cold.

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / OFFICE

HEALTH | GLOBAL

Office doping Why ‘smart drugs’ can make you less clever. Words: Nadira Faber

t is an open secret of the competitive modern workplace: while athletes dope their bodies, regular office workers dope their brains. They buy prescription drugs such as Ritalin or Provigil on the internet’s flourishing black market to boost their cognitive performance. It is hard to get reliable data on how many people take such “smart drugs” or “pharmacological cognitive enhancement substances”, as scientists call them. Prevalence studies and surveys suggest, though, that people from

different walks of life use them, such as researchers, surgeons, and students. In an informal poll among readers of the journal Nature, 20 per cent reported that they had taken smart drugs. And it seems that their use is on the rise. So, if you are in a demanding and competitive job, some of your colleagues probably take smart drugs. Does this thought worry you? If so, you are not alone. Studies consistently find that people see brain doping negatively. A main concern is fairness. Imagine that while you are going

Per cent of people in one poll who say they’ve taken smart drugs

for a run to boost your mental energy, your colleague is popping Ritalin instead. While you believe in your afternoon nap to regain concentration, your office mate relies on Provigil. Unfair? The general public thinks that taking smart drugs is cheating, because it can give users a competitive edge. In fact, even several academics have argued that brain doping is unfair towards people who don’t do it. So, if your colleague gets a better performance report than you do, is it really because of the Ritalin she takes?

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

If your office mate has more creative ideas, is it because of Provigil? Probably not. The smart drugs currently available can boost brain performance, yet they are not as effective as glaring media reports often suggest. In fact, research shows that while they can help some people achieve better, they can actually make others perform less well than they normally would. Let’s look at two prominent smart drugs, methylphenidate and modafinil, and their effects. Methylphenidate, bestknown under its brand name Ritalin, is a psychostimulant that increases the concentration of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. Methylphenidate is usually prescribed to people who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Indeed, this drug can have positive effects on memory performance. However, if methylphenidate can help with other important areas of cognitive performance, for example attention and learning, it isn’t clear yet. Importantly, people who normally do not perform that well benefit more from taking it than people who are natural high performers. Methylphenidate can even reduce the brain power of high performers, by weakening their short-term memory, for example.

UPFRONT / OFFICE

Modafinil, sold under names including Provigil or Alertec, is a wakefulness-promoting drug. Although its effects on the brain are not fully understood yet, modafinil works in part by increasing dopamine concentration. It has been developed to treat sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. Taking modafinil does improve attention, but it is still unclear whether it also brings any other cognitive benefits. If it does, they are likely to be small. But modafinil might also make you less smart: it can reduce creativity and flexibility in thinking. Also, similar to methylphenidate, modafinil boosts brain power more for people who normally show low performance. In other words, if you take modafinil you might make your performance better in one domain, but reduce it in another. And you will hardly benefit if you are a high performer anyway. That’s because smart drugs influence the concentration of neurotransmitters in the brain. Performance is highest at an optimal concentration, and both having too low and too high levels can make it worse. If you are a low performer, increasing your probably low concentration of a certain neurotransmitter with a smart drug can help you. If you are a high performer, you are probably close to having

Chemical breakdown of modafinil, the ‘wakefulness promoting’ drug that has become increasingly popular

Daytime naps as short as six minutes can improve memory

an optimal neurotransmitter concentration already and increasing it further will not improve your performance – it will make it worse. So there is an upper limit of how much can be achieved with brain doping. This is even true for low performers: by taking too many smart drugs, you just push your neurotransmitter level above the optimum and get reduced smartness in return. Instead of taking smart drugs, going for a run or taking a nap might actually be a better idea. Research shows that physical exercise improves, for instance, memory and learning, especially if done regularly. Similarly, sleep can improve brainpower, even if you are not tired. It has particularly large positive effects on memory, but can also increase creativity. Even naps as short as six minutes during daytime can improve memory. There are so far no studies that directly compare such nonpharmacological means to improve cognitive performance with smart drugs, but it appears that smart drugs are not more effective. Some might argue that smart drugs are therefore no big deal at all – and that we should simply stop thinking that it’s unfair to take them. Others don’t think it is that simple. People still tend to overestimate the effectiveness of smart drugs, which may lead them to order such drugs from an unregulated black market on the internet – despite the potential long-term side effects. The truth is that we just don’t know whether there are any such side effects yet. Also, overestimating the power of smart drugs can stigmatise users and create tensions between users and non-users, for example when they work together in teams. Our task as scientists is to help people get an accurate picture of what smart drugs can do – and what they cannot. Nadira Faber is a research fellow at University Of Oxford

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / 3D CLOTHING

TECHNOLOGY | GLOBAL

Digital steps Your next pair of shoes could come from a 3D printer. Words: Constance Gustke

he assembly line at Feetz has 100 humming 3D printers. Their sole purpose is to make shoes. Each printer is named after a cartoon character: Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo. Though whimsical, the printers, which cost $5,000 each, are out to upend mass retailing by making every shoe to order, cheaply. “We’re the technologists coming in to help,” said Lucy Beard, chief

executive of the two-year-old Feetz, in San Diego. “I saw 3D printers in a magazine, and I thought, ‘Mass customisation.’” Each printer can be reset to make different sizes and takes up to 12 hours to make a pair. The company, which recently started selling its shoes, has only 15 employees. But Beard, 38, a former actuary, envisions a day when shoes will be printed in under an hour. With limited labour and shipping costs

Hours it currently takes to 3D-print a pair of shoes

to pay and no back inventory, Feetz has a 50 per cent profit margin on every pair, she added. Ordering is done online, where customers can download an app, take smartphone snapshots of their feet and create a 3D model. Shoes, which cost $199, are made of recycled materials and are thickly padded for comfort. With the rise of new technologies like smartphones and 3D printers, fashion startups like Feetz are changing the ways goods are ordered, made and sold. Like Beard, several founders of these companies don’t have fashion backgrounds. Instead, they consider technology the answer to off-the-rack, mass-produced goods, which are increasingly shunned by millennials. Consumers with hard-to-find

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

sizes – like petite, or big and tall – will find shopping simpler. Traditionally, manufacturing is the most expensive part of the retail supply chain. Creating goods in small batches is difficult and costly. Most are manufactured overseas, and shipping goods to the United States adds time and cost to the process. So even “fast fashion” can take about six weeks to hit store shelves. The beauty of instant, customised fashion, experts say, is that goods can be made at a lower cost and more quickly – yet in a personalised style. Although disruption is a hot idea in the tech world, not everyone is convinced that this type of innovation will revolutionise fashion. James Dion, a retail consultant in Chicago, said he viewed customisable fashion as a passing fad with limited appeal. And the industry has already had one of its first failures: Tinker Tailor, which made custom luxury women’s apparel, closed last year after funding dried up. These are still early days for 3D printing, said Uli Becker, the former chief executive of Reebok and an investor in Feetz. The offerings are not very diversified, and they are limited to basic goods. And fabric cannot yet be printed. But he sees great potential for 3D printing. “You can start producing in America, for America,” he said. “Production facilities can be in the same place where you sell products, which creates jobs.” Also, the technology improves every month, Becker added. “This is the equivalent of the 1980s cellphone in a briefcase that puts a brick on your ear,” he said. “In the future, we’ll go into showrooms, select what we want and then order online or print out the product ourselves,” he said. Custom shoemakers like Feetz will also make in-store shoe fittings obsolete, experts say.

UPFRONT / 3D CLOTHING

Lucy Beard, the founder of Feetz, says, “I saw 3D printers in a magazine, and I thought, ‘Mass customisation’”

Per cent profit margin on 3D printed shoes due to reduced overheads

“In 10 years you won’t physically try on a pair of shoes,” Beard said. The promise is making Silicon Valley take notice. “We’ve been looking for companies that can use advanced technology,” said Vijit Sabnis, a venture partner at Khosla Ventures and an investor in Feetz. “And geeks and nerds are developing it. Feetz, for example, can change our experience in buying products.” Retail goods will eventually be made by robots and 3D printers, he said. And they will be made in hubs rather than big plants. “We’ll get rid of shipping costs and rethink the supply chain,” he said. “It’s really cool.” Khosla Ventures has also invested in fashion startups that use technology other than 3D printing. One is Shoes Of Prey, a website that allows shoppers to choose colours and styles of women’s shoes, in most cases, for less than $200. Another investment, MTailor, makes custom men’s shirts and suits by taking measurements on a smartphone. Shirts start at $69. Even the humble T-shirt is being reinvented. Teespring, founded in 2011, shipped more than 20 million custom T-shirts last year. It allows anyone to

design custom T-shirts with messages related to topics such as coffee, yoga and football and then sell them to customers. “We’re a technology company that creates T-shirts,” said Walker Williams, 27, chief executive of Teespring, who started the company with Evan StitesClayton, a friend from Brown University. “The future of fashion is in smaller brands that have relationships with customers.” Eventually, they plan to offer other custom clothing. Venture capitalists including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator have backed them to the tune of $56 million. Teespring built its own manufacturing systems in a factory in northern Kentucky that once made helicopters. Of its 400 employees, 40 are on the engineering team, building patented technology for rapidly printing small batches of T-shirts. Profit margins are slim, Williams acknowledges, but they are rising. “Anyone can bring a creative idea to life without having to be a retail expert,” said Lars Dalgaard, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. So consumers can now express themselves in a way “that was never possible before”, he added.

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NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / IPHONE 7

TECHNOLOGY | GLOBAL

Making the iPhone7

Breaking down the cost of an iPhone7� Words: Matt Pomroy

n iPhone7 equipped with 32 gigabytes of memory carries $219.80 in bill of materials costs, according to a preliminary estimate from IHS Markit, a leader in critical information, analytics and solutions. After $5 in basic manufacturing costs are added, Apple’s total cost to make the iPhone7 rises to $224.80, which is $36.89 higher than its predecessor, the 6s. The unsubsidised price for a 32GB iPhone7, however, is $649, so Apple makes around $442 per phone. It’s little wonder the company is worth $600 billion. “Total costs for the iPhone7 are more in line with what we have seen in teardowns of recent flagship phones from Apple’s main competitor, Samsung,” said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of cost benchmarking services for IHS Markit. “All other things being equal, Apple still makes more margin from hardware than Samsung, but materials costs are higher than in the past.” At $43, the touchscreen is the most expensive part of an iPhone. While the overall shape and physical design of the iPhone7 is similar to the 6s, the new display has a wider colour gamut that improves the rendering of photos and videos. The device’s haptic engine, which provides the “click” feel for users, has also been improved for longerduty cycles and better dynamic response. The home button is now static and mimics the MacBook in terms of a solid-state button design. iPhone7 is now officially rated as water resistant. “We

Cost breakdown Apps processor ��$26.90 (Apple A10, Quad-Core 64-Bit) Baseband RF PA ��$33.90 (RF Transceiver, antennae module, etc) Battery �� $2.50 (Li-Polymer, 3�8V, 1960mAh) Modem/Wi-Fi�� $8 BT/WLAN module) Cameras ��$19.90 (front and rear) Display �� $43 (touchscreen module) Electromechanicals��$16.70 (antennas, connectors, mics, speakers, etc) Glue logic �� $1.30 (lattice semiconductor) Mechanicals ��$18.20 (hardware, insulators, shielding, vents, etc) Memory (32GB) ��$16.40 Power management�� $7.20 (transistors, diodes, etc) User interface �� $14 (fingerprint sensor, audio amplifier, gyroscope, etc) Box contents ��$11.80 (including adaptor and charging cable) Manufacturing �� $5

TOTAL $224.80

$43

Cost of the touchscreen, the most expensive part of an iPhone

also saw evidence of this waterproofing design evolution in the earlier iPhone6s, which included additional gasketing around critical connectors, as well as the use of Wi-Fi antenna at the end of the primary speaker box,” analyst Wayne Lam said. “Doing so pushes the antennas near the only other opening, for better reception and transmission.” While not as groundbreaking as the two optical paths in the iPhone7 Plus, the iPhone7 camera has now been upgraded to optical image stabilisation, for

better low-light performance. The battery has been increased to 1960mAhr capacity from 1715mAh in the iPhone6s. This change is consistent with Apple’s claims of improved battery life. Apple has also eliminated the 3.5 millimetre headphone jack, allowing a larger battery and haptic motor. “Where there was an audio jack in the previous design, Apple replaced it with a symmetrical grill – not for speakers, but for the waterproof microphone, leaving more room for the larger battery and taptic engine,” Rassweiler said.

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UPFRONT

NOVEMBER / PROPERTY

ISSUE 131

FOR SALE | LONDON

Number 1 Palace Street Your chance to be neighbours with the Queen. Words: Matt Pomroy

f property is all about location, location, location, then the 1 Palace Street development is up there with the best locales in the world’s major cities. Not only is it in the hugely sought after St James’s Park area, it’s also next door to Buckingham Palace, meaning the Queen is your neighbour. Built in 1861, the Grade II listed wing of the building was originally a major hotel of the Victorian period, and often hosted the guests of Queen Victoria, who she didn’t fancy letting kip in one of her spare rooms at the palace. During the Second World War it became government offices. The new redevelopment will retain the original façade, but extensive work on the interior will

create 72 apartments with more than 10,000 square feet of facilities when it completes in 2019. Facilities include restaurant and full concierge service, access to underground parking, a communal courtyard garden, a 6,500 square feet “haven of wellbeing” for residents’ personal use that includes a gym, training suite, treatment rooms, cinema, library and one of the biggest private swimming pools in London. According to The Guadian, one of the bigger flats was bought offplan by an unnamed buyer for £20 million, but smaller apartments are going for much less. The one downside not mentioned in adverts is that your neighbours in the big house next door own a lot of dogs and occasionally like shooting.

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NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / 3D CLOTHING

DESIGN | GLOBAL

Stingray house The floating holiday home with some stylish cutting-edge design. Words: Matt Pomroy

F 32

rom international design firm Tangram 3DS and Boston-based Schopfer Associates, this property was created for a client as a luxury holiday home in the Aegean Sea. The two-storey residence was designed to have a sense of belonging to natural surroundings and floats on a composite foam concrete base. Tangram says it “embraces the romance and practical notion of living on water. A unique residence in every way,

this space has been modelled after the elegant sea fish, the stingray”. Arrival from the shore is via a dedicated floating “stinger tail” along a driveway that opens into a filtered skylit motor courtyard and front door. The main level is devoted to family use and entertainment with large floor-toceiling glass windows maximising sea views. There’s an open kitchen with rustic wooden cabinets and shelving while there are three bedrooms on the second level with

9,000

Square feet of floor space

focus around the central rotunda. A master suite has received a prominent placement with panoramic views. Two baths and dressing areas are both features of the master bedroom foyer. The power comes from both mains and solar panels. Other resort amenities include a deck featuring a beach, infinity edge pool, hot tub, a dock for your speedboat and a fire pit. The price has not been revealed but it will be completed by the end of 2017.

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NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / WELLBEING

Many resorts now offer a tailored package including prenatal yoga and pregnancy massages

WELLBEING | GLOBAL

Babymoons... A travel fad or mainstay must-do? Words: Helen Farmer

oneymoon? They’re a given. A long-standing tradition where couples spend the trip secretly longing to be upgraded by flashing the new jewellery, while pretending that love is all you need. Photos on Instagram that look like screensavers. And the one holiday where economy really isn’t the done thing. Until now. Babymoons are the latest (celebendorsed, obviously) travel trend, with parents-to-be in certain circles somewhat expected to take themselves off to a luxury resort for a bit of grown-up time before the sprog comes along. But… why? And how? The logic behind it is thus: before you know it, a tiny human is going to blast its way into your world, and things will never be the same again. From dinners à deux at Zuma to snacking on dusty raisins found in a child’s car-seat, from lazy weekend lie-ins to having your eyes prised open by sticky little fingers at 5.15am, and shopping for rare vinyl/Tom Ford makeup/ two-seater cars to racking up big bills on daycare, it’s all about to get very real. So before the little sleep thief arrives, the couple takes themselves off to relax,

to reconnect, to communicate just how absolutely buttock-clenchingly terrified they are about impending parenthood, all in five-star surrounds. It’s suggested, for practical purposes, that the trip take place in the second trimester of pregnancy so a) morning sickness should have passed b) the bump isn’t so enormous that seat belts are an issue c) the baby hopefully won’t make an appearance. With that in mind, relaxing holidays – book, sun-lounger, virgin mojito – are recommended over action-packed trips – trekking Great Wall of China, diving with sharks, Everest base camp – but as this might be your last non-kids club holiday for a while, do what you want. Within reason. City breaks can work well, as long as you’re not on the go all the time, and there’s a good balance of spa visits and room service. Many couples look at the babymoon as the time to tick off a bucket list destination, however, which is what makes the likes of the Maldives, Dubai and the Seychelles so popular. And, of course, many resorts now offer tailored packages, complete with prenatal yoga, specially designed menus and pregnancy massages.

Should you decide to travel far from home, make sure you have notes from your doctor (including a certificate to say you’re safe to fly) and research the nearest hospitals should you need them, as well as the airline’s policies for pregnant travellers. However, should it be the second bun in the oven, it gets a bit more complicated. Is this something you just do for baby number one? Where do you stash the existing kids if you decide to take a babymoon in subsequent pregnancies? Mum of three Emilie says “We went away for a week to Mauritius when I was pregnant with our first daughter, and would have loved to do it again in the other pregnancies, but in the end just had a staycation nearby, and the grandparents babysat. Even a weekend away without the kids was useful though, and we slept as much as possible.” Whether babymoons will catch on with the same rate of popularity as baby showers remains to be seen, but with gender reveal videos, ‘dadchelor’ parties, and push presents on the rise, it looks likely. “Parenting is competitive,” secondtime dad Dan says “And it’s starting even before the baby is born. I can’t help but blame social media – my wife saw the diamond bracelet her friend was given after giving birth, and photos from a colleague’s babymoon, so as soon as she got pregnant the requests started. It’s all about keeping up and showing off.” If you’re not the kind of couple who makes time for the big conversations (education, discipline and childcare options, for example) then booking a few days to be together without distractions of work and daily minutiae makes a lot of sense. Whether you stay in an overwater villa with a private butler, or just a hotel close to home is up to you.

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NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

UPFRONT / MARKETING

MARKETING | GLOBAL

Building a brand Why did the clothing brand Supreme release a branded brick and why did it sell out in 24 hours? Words: Matt Pomroy

hen cult streetwear brand Supreme released its autumn/winter range, it included lighters, keychains, umbrellas and… a brick. A 6oz standard clay house brick with the Supreme logo on the side, the company was charging $30 per brick. They sold out within 24 hours. So what’s the deal? There are few clothing brands with such a cult following as Supreme. Set up in Manhattan in 1994 (by a former child actor), it started out making clothing primarily for skateboarders, but the appeal has widened considerably since then. Supreme is not averse to releasing seemingly odd accessories. The brand has previously released a hammer, a calculator and a fire extinguisher. People even queued overnight to get one of its branded sleeping bags. The New York-based author David Shapiro has written a semi-

autobiographical book about the brand – and his obsession with it – and claimed that Supreme is not just a clothing brand, but also a “long-term conceptual art project about consumerism and theft… and corporate ownership”. Shapiro has said that Supreme is akin to the Damien Hirst of the fashion industry – some of its releases are seemingly ridiculous, but they are perceived to make a statement. Online forums have said the brand often releases things that allude to criminal activity and the brick is a reference to drugs, or to breaking into cars, or to rioting, while others say it’s a reference to street slang where “brick” means a bad outfit. Or perhaps there’s no hidden reason. The reason it sold out, however, is perhaps the easiest to explain. Despite being a fairly ridiculous branded item to release, there was a limited run. And these

68¢

Price of brick in hardware store that Supreme branded and charged $30

days anything limited become collectable, especially when it’s released by a company that has a huge cult following, as Supreme undoubtedly does. The brand has said in the past it doesn’t necessarily do limited editions, but simply doesn’t like to make too many of one thing in case it doesn’t sell well. But the bricks sold and the people who paid $30 to receive one were almost certainly not looking to acquire a brick, but to obtain something that can be resold on eBay for a profit. At the time of writing, the bricks on eBay were going for anything from $150 up to $1,000 and people were bidding. One listing already had 20 bids. Whether successful buyers will then be able to sell it on for more is doubtful, illustrating the greater fool theory, although no doubt some of the buyers are Supreme completists and collectors. When it comes to creating hype and making a product desirable, the fashion industry has always been one of the leaders. What the brand Supreme does is seemingly take that as far as it will go. Publicity stunt? Statement about the nature of the brand? Artistic statement about the gullibility of the buying public? Or just someone at the company having a laugh? Regardless, there are many more people now aware of the brand than there were before someone suggested selling a branded brick.

TECH RESTAURANTS

How tech disrupted Silicon Valley’s restaurant scene In places like Palo Alto, restaurants are struggling to survive. From rising costs to losing chefs to employee-only restaurants at tech HQs, it’s becoming hard to survive. And now robots are making the pizzas… Nicole Perlroth Jason Henry

TECH RESTAURANTS

t was not so long ago that the aroma of Moroccan-spiced prawns and wood-oven pizzas wafted out to a downtown street here from the open-air patio of a once popular eatery called Zibibbo. Today that patio is behind locked doors, obscured by frosted glass. The pizza oven is gone. The formerly crowded bar has been converted into a sparsely populated startup space of a dozen engineers, their bikes and whiteboards. After 17 years in operation, the restaurant closed in 2014. The space is now an American Express venture capital office and a startup incubator. All told, more than 6,500 square metres of Palo Alto retail and restaurant area were lost to office space from 2008 to 2015, as the tech bubble drove demand for commercial space downtown. It is a story playing out across Silicon Valley, where restaurateurs say that staying afloat is a daily battle with rising rents, high local fees and acute labour shortages. And tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google are hiring away their best line cooks, dishwashers and servers with wages, benefits and perks that restaurant owners simply cannot match. Silicon Valley technologists love to explain how they have disrupted the minutiae of daily life, from our commutes to the ways we share family photos. But along the way, they have also managed to disrupt their local restaurant industry. That may not be an issue for tech workers with access to free, farm-fresh cuisine in corporate cafeterias, but for everyone else here it is leaving a void between the takeout cuisine popping up around Palo Alto – picture bento boxes ordered on iPads at a counter – and $500 meals at high-end restaurants. “Restaurants as we know them will no longer exist here in the near future,” said Howard Bulka, a chef and owner of Howie’s Artisan Pizza in Palo Alto and another restaurant in nearby Redwood City. “Palo Alto is just too tough a row to hoe. A lot of people are looking into getting out in one piece or are thinking of leaving the business entirely.” With razor-thin profit margins, restaurateurs find they can increase wages only so much. Paying a liveable wage is a struggle in Palo Alto, where the average one-bedroom apartment rents for $2,800, the same as in New York City, according to Rent Jungle. Workers have also been driven out of surrounding towns that were previously affordable, like Cupertino and San Jose, where demand from a new influx of tech workers has driven up the average cost of a onebedroom apartment to more than $2,500. The cost to lease space in downtown Palo Alto, according to the city’s planning department, is now $78.90 per square metre, up more than 60 per cent

Left: Owners of Pizzeria Delfina Craig and Annie Stoll at their restaurant in Palo Alto Below: Google employees dining at Charlie’s Café at the company’s HQ. Google and other tech firms are luring restaurant workers with higher wages and more perks

“I support the startup community, but not at the expense of the community”

from four years ago. Landlords have also put the onus of building improvements on the tenants. Palo Alto requires restaurants to pay fees for things like sidewalk improvements, tree maintenance and parking. Restaurants that lease 93 square metres or more must provide four private parking spaces or pay an in-lieu parking fee of $63,848 per space, for a total of $255,392 – the highest such fee in the country. Successful restaurants often pay four to six per cent of gross sales in occupancy costs, which include rent and other fees like insurance and property taxes. But in Palo Alto, restaurateurs say the combination of high rents and staffing challenges has pushed their occupancy costs to 12 per cent of gross sales. “From an operating standpoint, it’s crushing,” Bulka said. “There’s just not enough profitability in this. Period.” “Help wanted” signs are now ubiquitous, and not only among restaurants. On a recent Wednesday, a sign outside a florist read: “Call our associate. We don’t have enough people to run the shop here right now.”

TECH RESTAURANTS

Above: Buca di Beppo restaurant, in Palo Alto. Help wanted signs are ubiquitous in the city Right: At Pizzeria Delfina owners say they haven’t been able to fully staff the place since it opened two years ago

Understaffed “fast casual” restaurants – frozen yoghurt, cupcake and tea shops; poké bars; and salad stations where customers order from the counter – have replaced older mom-and-pop restaurants. Other newcomers are well-heeled chains like Nobu, the global sushi empire that announced plans to open a restaurant in Palo Alto, and Sweetgreen, the salad chain startup that has raised $95 million in venture capital funding and can offset the costs of doing business in Palo Alto with sales from its more than 50 other locations. Not everyone is so fortunate. “We’re competing more for staff than we are for guests at this point,” said Craig Stoll, a James Beard Award-winning chef and co-owner with his wife, Annie Stoll, of Delfina. The Stolls own four restaurants in San Francisco and two in Silicon Valley – one in Burlingame and the other in Palo Alto. They have not been able to fully staff their Silicon Valley locations since they opened about two years ago. They used to require their line cooks to have particular experience. “Now we’re just selling ourselves on Craigslist, posting pictures of cooks butchering meat, sautéing, and good-looking waitresses to recruit staff,” Stoll said. In the last year, the Stolls have lost several of their best servers and their director of operations to

“We are competing for more staff than we are for guests at this point”

Twitter and Airbnb in San Francisco. To compete, the couple have been increasing pay and perks as much as possible, but they say they still often have to close off entire sections of their Silicon Valley restaurants simply because there is not enough staff to service them. Recently, they have resorted to hiring their 14-year-old daughter and her friends to step in. “We’re breeding our own workforce at this point,” Stoll joked. Just a few blocks from Pizzeria Delfina in Palo Alto, JC Andrade, an owner of Vino Locale, a family-run wine bar, said his bar lost its previous chef to Facebook. His family increased workers’ pay and now offers a 401(k) programme, but Facebook and Google continue to offer his staff higher wages than Andrade said he makes as owner. Increasingly, he said, he has to beg his 15-year-old brother to pick up shifts. Last year, Brigette Lau and Chamath Palihapitiya, founders of the venture fund Social Capital, opened Bird Dog, a stylish restaurant downtown. They had backing from other Silicon Valley investors eager to bring a slice of younger, innovative and relatively affordable San Franciscostyle cuisine to downtown Palo Alto. But even with Silicon Valley’s backing and their own substantial means – Palihapitiya is part owner of the Golden State Warriors basketball team – Lau said operating a restaurant in Palo Alto was not for the faint of heart. “I’m supportive of the startup community, but not at the expense of the community,” she said. Walk around downtown Palo Alto and you will probably stumble on an enticing dining space where seasonal menus with dishes like Cuban braised beef tease passers-by. But do not try to enter without a badge. The space is Palantir Technologies’ private, fully staffed, employee-only cafeteria. The privately held software company now occupies over 12 per cent of the rentable commercial office space downtown, according to the research firm PrivCo. The newest options for locals include Zume Pizza in nearby Mountain View, where robots cook the pizza. Zume delivers to Palo Alto – perhaps in driverless cars in a few years. On Palo Alto’s main street, adult-size robots, with screens featuring real people speaking from their homes in Bermuda or Kansas City, greet pedestrians and escort them into a Beam robot shop, which is unstaffed and empty save for the other robots selling themselves. “We joke that we’re all going to end up like Beam robots,” said Andrade, of Vino Locale. “It’s only a matter of time before someone hands them a tray.”

ALGORITHMS

Employers are turning to mathematically ALGORITHMS modelled ways of sifting through job applications. Even when wrong, their verdicts seem beyond dispute â€“ and they tend to punish the poor

How Algorithms Rule Our Working Lives

Cathy Oâ€™Neil

ALGORITHMS

few years ago, a young man named Kyle Behm took a leave from his studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was suffering from bipolar disorder and needed time to get treatment. A year and a half later, Kyle was healthy enough to return to his studies at a different university. Around that time, he learned from a friend about a part-time job. It was just a minimumwage job at a Kroger supermarket, but it seemed like a sure thing. His friend, who was leaving the job, could vouch for him. For a high-achieving student like Kyle, the application looked like a formality. But Kyle didn’t get called in for an interview. When he inquired, his friend explained to him that he had been “red-lighted” by the personality test he’d taken when he applied for the job. The test was part of an employee selection program developed by Kronos, a workforce management company based outside Boston. When Kyle told his father, Roland, an attorney, what had happened, his father asked him what kind of questions had appeared on the test. Kyle said that they were very much like the “five factor model” test, which he’d been given at the hospital. That test grades people for extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to ideas. At first, losing one minimum-wage job because of a questionable test didn’t seem like such a big deal. Roland Behm urged his son to apply elsewhere. But Kyle came back each time with the same news. The companies he was applying to were all using the same test, and he wasn’t getting offers. Roland Behm was bewildered. Questions about mental health appeared to be blackballing his son from the job market. He decided to look into it and soon learned that the use of personality tests for hiring was indeed widespread among large corporations. And yet he found very few legal challenges to this practice. As he explained to me, people who apply for a job and are red-lighted rarely learn that they were rejected because of their test results. Even when they do, they’re not likely to contact a lawyer. Behm went on to send notices to seven companies, including Home Depot and Walgreens, informing them of his intent to file a class-action suit alleging that the use of the exam during the job application process was unlawful. The suit, as I write this, is still pending. Arguments are likely to focus on whether the Kronos test can be considered a medical exam, the use of which in hiring is illegal under the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. If this turns out to be the case, the court will have to determine whether the hiring companies themselves are responsible for running afoul of the ADA, or if Kronos is.

But the questions raised by this case go far beyond which particular company may or may not be responsible. Automatic systems based on complicated mathematical formulas, such as the one used to sift through Behm’s job application, are becoming more common across the developed world. And given their scale and importance, combined with their secrecy, these algorithms have the potential to create an underclass of people who will find themselves increasingly and inexplicably shut out from normal life. It didn’t have to be this way. After the financial crash, it became clear that the housing crisis and the collapse of major financial institutions had been aided and abetted by mathematicians wielding magic formulas. If we had been clearheaded, we would have taken a step back at this point to figure out how we could prevent a similar catastrophe in the future. But instead, in the wake of the crisis, new mathematical techniques were hotter than ever, and expanding into still more domains. They churned 24/7 through petabytes of information, much of it scraped from social media or e-commerce websites. And increasingly they focused not on the movements of global financial markets but on human beings, on us. Mathematicians and statisticians were studying our desires, movements, and spending patterns. They were predicting our trustworthiness and calculating our potential as students, workers, lovers, criminals. This was the big data economy, and it promised spectacular gains. A computer program could speed through thousands of résumés or loan applications in a second or two and sort them into neat lists, with the most promising candidates on top. This not only saved time but also was marketed as fair and objective. After all, it didn’t involve prejudiced humans digging through reams of paper, just machines processing cold numbers. By 2010 or so, mathematics was asserting itself as never before in human affairs, and the public largely welcomed it. Most of these algorithmic applications were created with good intentions. The goal was to replace subjective judgments with objective measurements in any number of fields – whether it was a way to locate the worst-performing teachers in a school or to estimate the chances that a prisoner would return to jail. These algorithmic “solutions” are targeted at genuine problems. School principals cannot be relied upon to consistently flag problematic teachers, because those teachers are also often their friends. And judges are only human, and being human they have prejudices that prevent

ALGORITHMS

them from being entirely fair – their rulings have been shown to be harsher right before lunch, when they’re hungry, for example – so it’s a worthy goal to increase consistency, especially if you can rest assured that the newer system is also scientifically sound. The difficulty is that last part. Few of the algorithms and scoring systems have been vetted with scientific rigour, and there are good reasons to suspect they wouldn’t pass such tests. For instance, automated teacher assessments can vary widely from year to year, putting their accuracy in question. Tim Clifford, a New York City middle school English teacher of 26 years, got a 6 out of 100 in one year and a 96 the next, without changing his teaching style. Of course, if the scores didn’t matter, that would be one thing, but sometimes the consequences are dire, leading to teachers being fired. There are also reasons to worry about scoring criminal defendants rather than relying on a judge’s discretion. Consider the data pouring into the algorithms. In part, it comes from police interactions with the populace, which is known to be uneven, often race-based. The other kind of input, usually a questionnaire, is also troublesome. Some of them even ask defendants if their families have a history of being in trouble with the law, which would be unconstitutional if asked in open court but gets embedded in the defendant’s score and labelled “objective”. It doesn’t stop there. Algorithms are being used to determine how much we pay for insurance (more if your credit score is low, even if your driving record is clean), or what the terms of our loans will be, or what kind of political messaging we’ll receive. There are algorithms that find out the weather forecast and only then decide on the work schedule of thousands of people, laying waste to their ability to plan for childcare and schooling, never mind a second job. Their popularity relies on the notion they are objective, but the algorithms that power the data economy are based on choices made by fallible human beings. And, while some of them were made with good intentions, the algorithms encode human prejudice, misunderstanding, and bias into automatic systems that increasingly manage our lives. Like gods, these mathematical models are opaque, their workings invisible to all but the highest priests in their domain: mathematicians and computer scientists. Their verdicts, even when wrong or harmful, are beyond dispute or appeal. And they tend to punish the poor and the oppressed in our society, while making the rich richer. That’s what Kyle Behm learned the hard way.

“Algorithms are being used to determine how much we pay for insurance, or what the terms of our loans will be”

Finding work used to be largely a question of whom you knew. In fact, Kyle Behm was following the traditional route when he applied for work at Kroger. His friend had alerted him to the opening and put in a good word. For decades, that was how people got a foot in the door, whether at grocers, banks, or law firms. Candidates then usually faced an interview, where a manager would try to get a feel for them. All too often this translated into a single basic judgment: is this person like me (or others I get along with)? The result was a lack of opportunity for job seekers without a friend inside, especially if they came from a different race, ethnic group, or religion. Women also found themselves excluded by this insider game. Companies like Kronos brought science into corporate human resources in part to make the process fairer. Founded in the 1970s by MIT graduates, Kronos’ first product was a new kind of punch clock, one equipped with a microprocessor, which added up employees’ hours and reported them automatically. This may sound banal, but it was the beginning of the electronic push – now blazing along at warp speed – to track and optimise a workforce. As Kronos grew, it developed a broad range of software tools for workforce management, including a software program, Workforce Ready HR, that promised to eliminate “the guesswork” in hiring. According to its web page, Kronos “can help you screen, hire, and onboard candidates most likely to be productive – the best-fit employees who will perform better and stay on the job longer”. Kronos is part of a growing industry. The hiring business is becoming automated, and many of the new programs include personality tests like the one Kyle Behm took. It is now a $500 million annual business and is growing by 10 to 15 per cent a year, according to Hogan Assessment Systems Inc, a company that develops online personality tests. Such tests now are used on 60 to 70 per cent of prospective workers in the US, and in the UK, according to the Association Of Graduate Recruiters, 71 per cent of employers use some form of psychometric test for recruitment. Even putting aside the issues of fairness and legality, research suggests that personality tests are poor predictors of job performance. Frank

ALGORITHMS

Schmidt, a business professor at the University Of Iowa, analysed a century of workplace productivity data to measure the predictive value of various selection processes. Personality tests ranked low on the scale – they were only one-third as predictive as cognitive exams, and also far below reference checks. “The primary purpose of the test,” said Roland Behm, “is not to find the best employee. It’s to exclude as many people as possible as cheaply as possible.” You might think that personality tests would be easy to game. If you go online to take a five factor personality test, it looks like a cinch. One question asks: “Have frequent mood swings?” It would probably be smart to answer “very inaccurate”. Another asks: “Get mad easily?” Again, check no. In fact, companies can get in trouble for screening out applicants on the basis of such questions. Regulators in Rhode Island found that CVS Pharmacy was illegally screening out applicants with mental illnesses when a personality test required respondents to agree or disagree with such statements as “People do a lot of things that make you angry” and “There’s no use having close friends; they always let you down”. More intricate questions, which are harder to game, are more likely to keep the companies out of trouble. Consequently, many of the tests used today force applicants to make difficult choices, likely to leave them with a sinking feeling of “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t”. McDonald’s, for example, recently asked prospective workers to choose which of the following best described them: “It is difficult to be cheerful when there are many problems to take care of” or “Sometimes, I need a push to get started on my work”. In 2014, The Wall Street Journal asked a psychologist who studies behaviour in the workplace, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, to analyse thorny questions like these. The first of the two answers to the question from McDonald’s, Chamorro-Premuzic said, captured “individual differences in neuroticism and conscientiousness”; the second, “low ambition and drive”. So the prospective worker is pleading guilty to being either high-strung or lazy. A Kroger supermarket question was far simpler: Which adjective best describes you at work, unique or orderly? Answering “unique”, said ChamorroPremuzic, captures “high self-concept, openness and narcissism”, while “orderly” expresses conscientiousness and self-control. Note that there’s no option to answer “all of the above”. Prospective workers must pick one option, without a clue as to how the program will

interpret it. And some of the analysis will draw unflattering conclusions. Defenders of the tests note that they feature lots of questions and that no single answer can disqualify an applicant. Certain patterns of answers, however, can and do disqualify them. And we do not know what those patterns are. We’re not told what the tests are looking for. The process is entirely opaque. What’s worse, after the model is calibrated by technical experts, it receives precious little feedback. Sports provide a good contrast here. Most professional basketball teams employ data geeks, who run models that analyse players by a series of metrics, including foot speed, vertical leap, free-throw percentage, and a host of other variables. Teams rely on these models when deciding whether or not to recruit players. But if, say, the Los Angeles Lakers decide to pass on a player because his stats suggest that he won’t succeed, and then that player subsequently becomes a star, the Lakers can return to their model to see what they got wrong. Whatever the case, they can work to improve their model. Now imagine that Kyle Behm, after getting red-lighted at Kroger, goes on to land a job at McDonald’s. He turns into a stellar employee. He’s managing the kitchen within four months and the entire franchise a year later. Will anyone at Kroger go back to the personality test and investigate how they could have got it so wrong? Not a chance, I’d say. The difference is this: basketball teams are managing individuals, each one potentially worth millions of dollars. Their analytics engines are crucial to their competitive advantage, and they are hungry for data. Without constant feedback, their systems grow outdated and dumb. The companies hiring minimumwage workers, by contrast, act as if they are managing herds. They slash expenses by replacing

ALGORITHMS

human resources professionals with machines, and those machines filter large populations into more manageable groups. Unless something goes haywire in the workforce – an outbreak of kleptomania, say, or plummeting productivity – the company has little reason to tweak the filtering model. It’s doing its job – even if it misses out on potential stars. The company may be satisfied with the status quo, but the victims of its automatic systems suffer. The majority of job applicants, thankfully, are not blackballed by automatic systems. But they still face the challenge of moving their application to the top of the pile and landing an interview. This has long been a problem for racial and ethnic minorities, as well as women. The ideal way to circumvent such prejudice is to consider applicants blindly. Orchestras, which had long been dominated by men, famously started in the 1970s to hold auditions with the musician hidden behind a sheet. Connections, reputations, race or alma mater no longer mattered. The music from behind the sheet spoke for itself. Since then, the percentage of women playing in major orchestras has leapt by a factor of five – though they still make up only a quarter of the musicians. The trouble is that few professions can engineer such an evenhanded tryout for job applicants. Musicians behind the sheet can actually perform the job they’re applying for, whether it’s a Dvorák cello concerto or bossa nova on guitar. In other professions, employers have to hunt through CVs, looking for qualities that might predict success. As you might expect, human resources departments rely on automatic systems to winnow down piles of résumés. In fact, in the US, some 72 per cent of CVs are never seen by human eyes. Computer programs flip through them, pulling out the skills and experiences that the employer is looking for. Then they score each

CV as a match for the job opening. It’s up to the people in the human resources department to decide where the cutoff is, but the more candidates they can eliminate with this first screening, the fewer human hours they’ll have to spend processing the top matches. So job applicants must craft their résumés with that automatic reader in mind. It’s important, for example, to sprinkle the résumé liberally with words the specific job opening is looking for. This could include previous positions (sales manager, software architect), languages (Mandarin, Java), or honours (summa cum laude). Those with the latest information learn what machines appreciate and what tangles them up, and tailor their applications accordingly. The result of these programs is that those with the money and resources to prepare their résumés come out on top. Those who don’t take these steps may never know that they’re sending their résumés into a black hole. It’s one more example in which the wealthy and informed get the edge and the poor are more likely to lose out.

“In the US, some 72 per cent of CVs are never seen by human eyes. Computer programs flip through them” So far, we’ve been looking at models that filter out job candidates. For most companies, those models are designed to cut administrative costs and to reduce the risk of bad hires (or ones that might require more training). The objective of the filters, in short, is to save money. HR departments, of course, are also eager to save money through the hiring choices they make. One of the biggest expenses for a company is workforce turnover, commonly called churn. Replacing a worker earning $50,000 a year costs a company about $10,000, or 20 per cent of that worker’s yearly pay, according to the Center for American Progress. Replacing a high-level employee can cost as much as two years of salary. Naturally, many hiring models attempt to calculate the likelihood that a job candidate will stick around. Evolv, Inc, now a part of Cornerstone OnDemand, helped Xerox scout out prospects for its call centres, which employ more than 40,000 people. The churn model took into account some of the metrics you might expect, including the average time people

ALGORITHMS

stuck around on previous jobs. But they also found some intriguing correlations. People the system classified as “creative types” tended to stay longer at the job, while those who scored high on “inquisitiveness” were more likely to set their questioning minds towards other opportunities. But the most problematic correlation had to do with geography. Job applicants who lived farther from the job were more likely to churn. This makes sense: long commutes are a pain. But Xerox managers noticed another correlation. Many of the people suffering those long commutes were coming from poor neighbourhoods. So Xerox, to its credit, removed that highly correlated churn data from its model. The company sacrificed a bit of efficiency for fairness. While churn analysis focuses on the candidates most likely to fail, the more strategically vital job for HR departments is to locate future stars, the people whose intelligence, inventiveness, and drive can change the course of an entire enterprise. In the higher echelons of the economy, companies are on the hunt for employees who think creatively and work well in teams. So the modellers’ challenge is to pinpoint, in the vast world of big data, the bits of information that correlate with originality and social skills. A pioneer in this field is Gild, a San Francisco– based startup. Extending far beyond a prospect’s alma mater or résumé, Gild sorts through millions of job sites, analysing what it calls each person’s “social data”. The company develops profiles of job candidates for its customers, mostly tech companies, keeping them up to date as the candidates add new skills. Gild claims that it can even predict when a star employee is likely to change jobs and can alert its customer companies when it’s the right time to make an offer. But Gild’s model attempts to quantify and also qualify each worker’s “social capital”. How integral is this person to the community of fellow programmers? Do they share and contribute code? Say a Brazilian coder – Pedro, let’s call him – lives in São Paulo and spends every evening from dinner to one in the morning in communion with fellow coders the world over, solving cloud-computing problems or brainstorming gaming algorithms on sites such as GitHub or Stack Overflow. The model could attempt to gauge Pedro’s passion (which probably gets a high score) and his level of engagement with others. It would also evaluate the skill and social importance of his contacts. Those with larger followings would count for more. If his principal online contact happened to be Google’s Sergey Brin, say, Pedro’s social score would no doubt shoot through the roof.

“One model can predict when a star employee is likely to change jobs and say when it’s the right time to make an offer”

But models like Gild’s rarely receive such explicit signals from the data. So they cast a wider net, in search of correlations to workplace stardom wherever they can find them. And with more than six million coders in their database, the company can find all kinds of patterns. Vivienne Ming, Gild’s chief scientist, said in an interview with Atlantic Monthly that Gild had found a bevy of talent frequenting a certain Japanese manga site. If Pedro spends time at that comic-book site, of course, it doesn’t predict superstardom. But it does nudge up his score. That makes sense for Pedro. But certain workers might be doing something else offline, which even the most sophisticated algorithm couldn’t infer – at least not today. They might be taking care of children, for example, or perhaps attending a book group. The fact that prospects don’t spend six hours discussing manga every evening shouldn’t be counted against them. And if, like most of techdom, that manga site is dominated by males and has a sexist tone, a good number of the women in the industry will probably avoid it. Despite these issues, Gild’s category of predictive model has more to do with rewarding people than punishing them. It is tame compared with widely-used personality tests that exclude people from opportunities. Still, it’s important to note that these hiring models are ever-evolving. The world of data continues to expand, with each of us producing ever-growing streams of updates about our lives. All of this data will feed our potential employers insights into us. Will those insights be tested, or simply used to justify the status quo and reinforce prejudices? When I consider the sloppy and self-serving ways that companies often use data, I’m reminded of phrenology, a pseudoscience that was briefly popular in the 19th century. Phrenologists would run their fingers over the patient’s skull, probing for bumps and indentations. Each one, they thought, was linked to personality traits. If a patient was morbidly anxious or suffering from alcoholism, the skull probe would usually find bumps and dips that correlated with that observation – which, in turn, bolstered faith in the science of phrenology. Phrenology was a model that relied on pseudoscientific nonsense to make authoritative pronouncements, and for decades it went untested. Big data can fall into the same trap. Models like the ones that red-lighted Kyle Behm continue to lock people out, even when the “science” inside them is little more than a bundle of untested assumptions. Adapted from Weapons Of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy

Computer generated image, indicative only.

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Catfight on the catwalks Vogueâ€™s attack on style bloggers shows how much the newcomers have the fashion mags rattled Natalie McCreesh

FASHION BLOGGERS

or years, style bibles such as Vogue and Elle have found their exclusivity undermined by bloggers, who – with huge numbers of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram followers – have won over the designer brands that would normally only deal with major publications. Inevitably, this tension occasionally breaks the surface, as when Vogue editors recently lashed out at fashion bloggers in their Milan Fashion Week round-up column. Criticising fashion bloggers for the practice of being paid to wear certain outfits, the Vogue journalists called the bloggers “pathetic”, accused them of “looking ridiculous” and decried the whole affair as “all pretty embarrassing”. Scathingly, Vogue’s creative digital director Sally Singer wrote: “Note to bloggers who change head-to-toe paid-to-wear outfits every hour: please stop. Find another business. You are heralding the death of style.” This is not the first of such broadsides from fashion writers. In 2013, The New York Times’ renowned fashion journalist Suzie Menkes berated the “poseurs” gathered outside fashion shows, waiting for keen street-style photographers to take their picture. It was the first of many slaps in the face for fashion bloggers, who were branded “wannabes” desperate for attention. Yet since then bloggers have only gained in popularity, with the Spanish edition of Vogue even featuring the Italian model and blogger turned fashion designer Chiara Ferragni on its cover in 2015. For a blogger to reach the cover of Vogue, the very pinnacle of style, suggested that the fashion bloggers had been finally accepted. It seems not. Perhaps Vogue’s biggest bugbear is that bloggers are invited to sit on the front row at fashion shows – an honoured position previously reserved for celebrities and editors of glossy magazines. Yet bloggers have become a hybrid of the two – part editor, part celebrity – and thanks to their enormous social media presence they have developed the style-influencing selling power built to match both. Certainly, fashion designers and brands were quick to recognise the power wielded by bloggers. If offering a blogger an invitation to sit on the front row wearing their latest designs encouraged sales, why wouldn’t they? It’s grossly insulting to suggest bloggers don’t work hard for their position. Bloggers often style

Chiara Ferragni on the cover of Spanish Vogue

“The insular walls of the fashion industry have been shaken – and fashion has become a lot more democratic”

themselves, take their own photos, attend fashion shows, write their own copy and design and edit their websites as well as provide the constant updates to their social media channels required to keep their audience engaged. Especially when starting out, they will have to do all this for themselves. Standing in the cold for more than an hour in sky-high heels (because being photographed is part of your job) before sitting on a dusty floor or trying to catch a glimpse of the runway from behind 15 rows of people is a due all true fashion lovers have paid. How much easier it must be to walk straight in from your warm company car with no queue to face – and no heavy camera to carry as your publication will have sent their own photographer.A whole team brought in to report on a single day’s events. And let’s not forget that running a blog is essentially an unpaid role, and how – or if – the owner chooses to make money from it is up to them. One way of making it pay is to work directly with fashion brands. A brand might gift or lend a blogger some items to wear. The blogger gets to create a new outfit and something to write about, and the brand gets exposure – surely a mutually rewarding relationship? Something Vogue’s writers forget is that the price of the garments we see on the runway make them unobtainable for most people. They are displayed in the glossy pages of Vogue as “aspirational” items. For most, the only experience of the latest fashion designs will be in the trickle-down version produced for the budget-friendly high street. This is how the fashion cycle works – and magazines have played a huge role as gatekeepers. The rest of the world only sees those designer pieces from the runway that magazine editors chose to include. Fashion bloggers have worked around this filter, by publicising the looks from the shows they choose and by wearing borrowed (or gifted or purchased) garments from the show. The insular walls of the fashion industry have been shaken – and fashion has become a lot more democratic. With the growing power of bloggers came a decrease in power of the fashion magazine. The magazines now attack the bloggers for the same things that in effect magazines and magazine journalists have always done – albeit not so publicly. In the UK, under Advertising Standards Authority rules bloggers must disclose any

FASHION BLOGGERS

THE FASHION BLOGGERS

They have millions of followers, are celebrities in their own right, appear on the covers of magazines, have endorsement deals with fashion brands and have launched their own lines of clothing. No wonder fashion journalists are scared of them. Here are three worth knowing

Chiara Ferragni

working relationships they have with Or as one blogger, Susie Bubble, Above (L-R): Chiara Ferragni, Helena brands or if they are wearing a gifted put it in a reply to Vogue, “The noise Bordon, Mia Moretti item. Yet magazines are not required to of a few grumbling industry insiders and Cleo Wade play by the same rules. is merely distraction from the real attend New York Fashion Week It is well known that magazines conversation that is going on in give editorial coverage to advertisers this wider fashion landscape. It’s a in addition to attending advertiser’s shows. The conversation that keeps fashion, as ever, always prestige of magazines like Vogue is jealously changing and evolving.” guarded, because it is prestige that brands will Vogue is still the fashion bible for many. pay for – and advertising income is increasingly Countless newcomers to the industry aspire precious as more and more readers move online. to work for the magazine one day – but, until This works well for salaried editors and brands then, starting a fashion blog is a way to tap into with huge marketing budgets, but what about the industry and share a love for fashion. The smaller fashion brands or newcomers? Speaking question must be asked why Vogue would not to The New York Times, Philip Oh, Street Peeper nurture and celebrate this enthusiasm and talent. blog photographer, made this clear. “Most young If “style” is an individual’s innate sense of designers don’t have the resources to hire high- dress, can an edited magazine such as Vogue ever powered PRs or have access to important editors really reflect style? Style is not fashion – and and stylists. So lending their clothes to friends fashion is only ever style when taken and made and supporters who will get photographed is a personal by an individual, something more likely great way to get noticed by both the industry found on the street than in the professional, paidand consumers.” for pages of a magazine. It was bloggers and street-style photographers Alexandra Codinha, fashion news editor for that were credited with helping up-and-coming Vogue.com, said: “The fashion world can all London brand Ostwald Helgason get its break in too easily feel like an impenetrable bubble.” An 2012 when its trademark bold striped pieces were impenetrable bubble indeed – one created by the snapped and pasted across street style blogs during likes of Vogue. Is it any surprise to see the bloggers London Fashion Week. “For us, as a small brand, revolt, staking their claim and right to fashion? we would never be able to get that kind of exposure Natalie McCreesh is the senior lecturer, Fashion Marketing & Communication, Sheffield Hallam University [otherwise],” Susanne Ostwald said.

The 28-year-old Italian was recently named the most influential fashion blogger by fashionista. com. With over 5.6 million Instagram followers, 1.2 million Facebook subscribers and a popular website her influence in undeniable. She also has her own lucrative shoe line, which is available at over 300 retailers worldwide and made her in access of $10 million last year. In addition, she’s a global ambassador for the shampoo brand Pantene and is about to open her own flagship store in Milan.

Wendy Nguyen The LA-based blogger quit her job to start a YouTube channel with fashion ‘how-to’ videos, and now has a YouTube following that includes more than 650,000 subscribers. Her short video showing 25 ways to wear a scarf currently has 36 million views. Nguyen also runs her own website – Wendy’s Lookbook – and has more than a million followers on Instagram.

Julie Sariñana Instagram analytics company Websta rank Julie Sariñana as the most influential on the platform under the category of ‘Fashion Lifestyle’. With 3.99 million followers her reach is huge and engagement is also big – over 40,000 engaged with one of her images that was simply a photo of a cactus in her office. She has her own clothing line sold via her sincerelyjules.com website and regularly contributes to titles such as Elle, Glamour and yes, Vogue.

AERIAL NEW YORK

Aerial New York

Photographer Jeffrey Milstein has captured images of some of the worldâ€™s great cities from the air. These images of New York show famous landmarks from a spectacular new perspective

AERIAL NEW YORK Large format limited-edition prints are available through the photographerâ€™s galleries. jeffreymilstein.com

STATUE OF LIBERTY Liberty Island is almost all in the shot, with the iconic statue on its star-shaped plinth and flagpole plaza to the left

AERIAL NEW YORK

MACYâ€™S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE The parade heading along Central Park West past three of the most famous residences in the city. The two towers of the San Remo building, The Langham (next to the green dinosaur) and at the top the Dakota Building. The 2016 parade is on the 24th of this month starting at 9am

AERIAL NEW YORK

TIMES SQUARE The point where Broadway intersects with 7th Avenue, lit up by advertising signs, shop fronts and theatres

AERIAL NEW YORK

COLUMBUS CIRCLE Columbus Circle at the south-west corner of Central Park. The new Hearst Tower is two blocks above, thatâ€™s Broadway cutting through on the diagonal, and to the side of the park is the start of Central Park West and some of the most sought after property in the country

AERIAL NEW YORK

THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING The Empire State Building in the centre on the corner of West 34th street and 5th Avenue almost blends into the dense mass of buildings. Cutting across on the diagonal is Broadway (it actually runs north to south), the only non-parallel line in the image of Midtown Manhattan

AERIAL NEW YORK

CENTRAL PARK This shows Terrace Drive cutting into the park from 72nd Street at the bottom and passing the redbrick Bethesda Terrace. The green patch to the right isn’t grass, it’s the lake with the boathouse in the bottom right of the photo. On the left, that’s Wollman Ice Rink with the zoo above it bottom right

AERIAL NEW YORK

How Lego came back from near bankruptcy to become the biggest toy company in the worldâ€Ś and why thatâ€™s awesome

Rebuilding

Lego

Matt Pomroy

REBUILDING LEGO

Now the company is in a good position, they are set to open a new Lego house, next year in Bullund. The 12,000m2 building will be a hands-on mindson experience centre where fans of all ages can come and experiment with Lego bricks, share stories, express their imagination and creativity, and be challenged as Lego builders by meeting other builders from all over the world. Lego say that the house is not a commercial venture for them, but expect it to attract around 250,000 visitors each year. It will also have curriculumbased learning so that Danish schools can visit and use Lego for learning.

he story of Lego’s rise, near bankruptcy and spectacular comeback is one worth knowing, because the lessons they learned to return from the brink are ones that apply to a business in any field. But also, it’s a story about a company that does something special. Few corporations in the history of humanity do as much to fuel creativity as Lego and contribute so much to millions of children. The founders of, for example, Google have said that it was Lego that shaped their young minds, while a survey of more than 260 British architects found that 99 per cent of them had enjoyed building with Lego as children. The fact that Lego survived and is still with us, currently in good health, is something we should be celebrating. And learning from. Billund is a small town in Jutland, Denmark, about three hours’ drive from the capital, Copenhagen. Its population is just over 6,000 and there’s not a lot here, but it has the second-largest airport in the country. The reason is, Billund is the home of Lego’s headquarters and of the original Legoland – and from this tiny town the global toy empire is run. “I can always tell how old people are by which Lego set gets the big reaction,” says my guide as he takes Portfolio around the private collection at the Lego Idea House in Billund, through room after room of fully-built Lego models, all of which chart the evolution of the product though the decades and, by extension, the company.

Fire Station from 1981 on display at The Idea House

For me, the set that gave away my age was the Lego Fire Station, [6382] released in 1981 (pictured above). People have been known to shed tears upon seeing their favourite childhood Lego set for the first time in decades. There were no tears here, just a big smile and sharp intake of breath. “Ahh, there we go… I’ll give you a minute,” he says sympathetically. The Idea House is built on the site of where the first brick was created. Lego’s roots are back

REBUILDING LEGO

in 1932 when a carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, was struggling to sell his usual furniture during the Great Depression, so started making wooden toys as well. It proved popular, but his toy business really took off after the Second World War, when he spotted the potential of injection-moulded plastic. Ole Kirk invested in the new technology – which then was a small hand-operated machine – to make plastic toys. In 1949, he released his Automatic Binding Bricks, the forerunner of the Lego brick, but they were hollow underneath meaning that stacking was fine but they weren’t stable. In 1955, Ole Kirk’s son, Godtfred, came up with the interlocking studand-tube design that made the company its fortune and a household name. They had created the now famous Lego “system of play”.

odtfred re-examined what the company was making and saw that 90 per cent of it didn’t fall into that system of play, where one set is compatible with another and expands the possibilities for building and creativity. It was then they decided to focus on the plastic brick. The business took off and that system still works today. In 1963 they switched material to the shiny, hard ABS plastic that makes then so durable – and painful if you stand on one in bare feet. That strength, however, is what made them so enduring. A brick from an early set will fit with one from a set made this morning, and still be in usable condition. The company just grew. Every year it seemed to be getting bigger and making more money. After introducing Space and Town Lego in the late ’70s it went through a huge period of growth and doubled in size every five years for 15 years. Production was huge and there are now 84 Lego bricks for every person on the planet. Even when they made a wrong decision, it often turned out alright. After noticing that children often leave Lego aged nine or 10 they brought in Lego Technics to attract teenagers. It failed to attract teens and instead was being bought by men aged 25 to 50. It still is today with adult fans of Lego (AFOLs), of which there are 460,000 registered worldwide. So why did Lego end up in a situation where it was nearly bankrupt? In the late 1990s the company was beginning to struggle. It was believed that children were leaving traditional toys earlier than ever and moving on to video games, so to try and get themselves out of the slump Lego went through a programme of innovation. But that innovation nearly killed them and in 2003 they were close to going out of business. In 1998 Lego posted its first ever loss, at $47.8 million, but the following year they were back in

The counting machine at the processing facility in Billund, Denmark

“In 2004 they posted the biggest loss in the company’s history: $374 million”

profit. It was just a blip, right? In 2000 there was a loss, but in 2001 and 2002 there were back in profit once more, if only just. Part of the problem was, only three of their lines were making money – Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter and Bionicles. The first two only made money when there was a film out. If there was no film that year it was a big issue and there were no new movies from either franchise in 2003 or the first half of 2004. By 2003 sales had fallen 29 per cent worldwide, and in 2004 they posted the biggest loss in the company’s history: $374 million. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was internally appointed as CEO – the first non-family member to hold the position. His memo to the board said: “We’re on a burning platform.” By this point the brand had moved away from what they were known for and were expanding into non-brick fields including publishing, clothing and more theme parks. As Knudstorp put it at the

REBUILDING LEGO

FROM FANS TO EMPLOYEES PIERRE NORMANDIN (40) The Canadian has been at Lego for eight years. He graduated with a geography degree and was working for the government in Canada but was part of the adult fan of Lego (AFOL) community. He was displaying one of his models at a fan convention in Washington DC and was spotted by a Lego employee who asked if he’d ever thought about being a designer for Lego. He now works on the team made designs the Lego City range. MILAN REINDL (36) The Russian and English languages teacher from the Czech Republic was a fan of Lego as a child but then got back into Lego at the age of 25. After three attempts he landed a job as a designer, largely based on the Lego Technics models that he had been creating for himself as a hobby. He now works full time in Billund as a designer in the Lego Technics group.

time: “Companies don’t die from starvation, they die from indigestion. You can only build something adjacent to your core business every three to five years because it’s such a major undertaking. It nearly killed us. And then people lose focus on their core business.” “The money we were losing every day was crazy, we were one year from going under,” Jan Christensen, communication manager at Lego, tells us. “The decision was made that the company will be whatever the brick business will be. Even if we have to go back to being a small European company again, then so be it. We got back to basics – we got back to brick.”

lrich Dano is the senior vice president of product marketing and development and is also clear about what the company was doing wrong at the end of last century. He tells Portfolio: “There are two main things we learned: We lost touch with our consumers and started developing products that

Above: Production machines at the Lego factory. Right: Workplace of Lego designers, including staff slide. Bottom: Rows of spare parts at Lego Innovation House where new products are designed

“Lego will be whatever the brick business will be. We got back to basics – we got back to brick”

we didn’t test with the same rigor and we became disconnected with what our consumers wanted. And we were not close enough to our retailers to understand the needs that they have.” One of the things that Lego did in the late ’90s was to try and appeal to four and five year olds by making many of their toy sets simpler to build, eliminating many of the smaller parts and reducing the number of bricks. But it didn’t work. “We encountered two difficulties,” says Dano. “It didn’t look like what it should be, and it was too pre-determined.” Things like the fire engine no longer looked like the fire engine that children might see in real life and so it lost appeal and with fewer pieces, and more of what they refer to as ‘quick-start’ elements, it made the set easier to construct, but also reduced the creative possibilities.” Those children who didn’t want to build something would buy a different toy car anyhow and those that did want to build and appreciated Lego didn’t find these new designs interesting or challenging.

REBUILDING LEGO

“It’s important that whatever new element [individual piece of Lego] we provide gives an opportunity for building. We’re a lot stricter now than we used to be. We want to make sure that when Lego is in a child’s playroom it’s not difficult to be creative with. We provide inspiration. Through the instructions that come with the sets we teach kids how to build and how to be able to build interlocking in a way that things don’t fall apart, but it’s important for us that the end page of the building instruction is not the end of play. It might be the end of making this model, but it’s only the start of being creative.” They had to get back to what the company was about when they started making building bricks. Lego looked to the words of the second generation CEO Godtfred Kirk Christiansen who said in 1955 that “our idea has been to create a toy that prepares the child for life – appealing to its imagination and developing the creative urge and joy or creation that are the driving force in every human being”. This was a man who said his mission was to “inspire the

REBUILDING LEGO

TIMELINE

1932 Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen begins to manufacture wooden toys.

1942 Lego now has 15 staff, making them one of the biggest employers in Billund.

1949 The first building brick from the Lego Group was the Automatic Binding Brick.

1953 Automatic Binding Bricks gets a new name: Lego Mursten (Lego Bricks). “Lego” is printed inside all bricks.

1958 The current Lego studand-tube coupling system is patented.

2016 Legoland themepark opens in Dubai.

2015 Lego becomes the world’s biggest toy.

2014 Lego movie released in cinemas.

2004 Lego posts its biggest ever loss – $374 million.

1999 Star Wars Lego is licensed.

builders of tomorrow”, so the company focused on its key lines: Lego City, Lego Technic, Lego Creator, and basic Lego sets. In 2004 they brought back Duplo, dubbed “the bigger brick for smaller hands” that targeted children aged up to five years and did what good brands should be doing – listening to their customers. Even if they were toddlers.

E 68

lizabeth Kahl-Baches is the creative lead in Duplo and explains the science behind its success. “All the models we make need to look like a child’s drawing – simple and iconic,” she says. “Just look at the Duplo house, it looks like a child’s drawing of a house.” The team had product-testing sessions once a week with children in kindergartens. “We look for smiles and laughs as they can’t say much at two years old, but they confirm what works.” Through developing repetitive play (“windows opening and closing, simple movements”) young children can interact and then the team adds “play triggers” like a slide or something that can help tell a story. It also shows them what doesn’t work. “We first had a number on the Duplo house but the context confused them – this wasn’t a numbers thing, it was a house thing. But putting numbers on the toy train worked because they go in sequence.”

Sets like the numbers train (with one to nine on each carriage), she explains, also give parents an entry point to ask children about something and encourage them to read out loud, but always ensuring it’s a toy first and a learning tool second. They release around 20 new models each year for parents who are looking for something new and each is thoroughly tested. Much in the same way that over many years Sesame Street perfected how best to present information for numbers and learning, so Lego has perfected play triggers. Perhaps the most interesting thing, however, is the team found that what works in Europe, also works everywhere else in the world. “It’s only the parents that are different,” Kahl-Baches explains. “We found that the cultures are the same with the children, but society has affected the parent.” This view is echoed by Dano, who confirms: “We have not seen a child anywhere in the world rejecting the Lego system. It might not be accessible to some kids around the world for many reasons but it is relevant globally. There are some children that just love construction while for others the building is not the centre, they need a story to inspire them, but all have liked it.” A similar principle works for the Lego City range, which is largely targeted at five to nine year

REBUILDING LEGO

1964 The first Lego sets containing instruction manuals are introduced.

1968 Legoland Billund opens its gates on June 7 and attracts 3,000 on the opening day and 625,000 visitors in its first season.

1969 Duplo series for under-fives is launched internationally and crucially is compatible with Lego bricks.

1977 The Lego Technics (originally called Technical Sets) and Lego Town series are launched.

1978 Minifigures with movable limbs are introduced. By 2011 more than four billion mini figures had been made.

1989 Lego Pirates theme is launched.

1988 Lego clothing line is introduced.

1987 Lego products are now selling in 115 markets.

1979 Younger spinoff Fabuland is introduced.

1978 Product lines Space and Castle are introduced.

olds. Ricco Rejnholdt Krog is the design director for Lego City and explains the philosophy behind what they create. “You make the product as universal as possible,” he says. “And we don’t tell people how to play or how the story should evolve.” The thinking with Lego City is rooting it in things a child can meet on the walk home from school – fire engines, police car, petrol stations, and so on. No aliens or monsters – City is rooted in realism. “We travelled the world with these toys and models and asked five to nine year olds what they think and found that children are children – China or Hamburg the results are the same, so we design globally,” he adds.

ego also operate with a code that means conflict is only there as a play trigger. “Police and crooks is as far as we go, and they are not smart crooks and nobody has weapons, but the police Lego sets always sell well,” Krog says. The sets in the late ’70s were covered in Shell Oil logos, but since the ’90s (aside from a few promotional items) they have used Octan, a brand made up by Lego themselves. Rejnholdt Krog insists there is no current temptation to sell sponsored branding on Lego sets, despite the money it could bring in. “We really don’t need

“Even in a crisis we’re discussing, more, ‘How do we treat people?’ rather than how we could save a penny. People are not just resources”

brands or corporation to put their logos on our toys and we wouldn’t take a lot of money from Starbucks to have their logos on the coffee shop because who does that benefit? Does it enhance the child’s play? If not, then the answer is no.” For the Friends range, which is largely aimed at young girls, play patterns were based on what they know to be relatable (“friendship and harmony”) and they ensured that the main colours are purple and pastel shades. “We made no new pink bricks,” Portfolio is told. Just like the yellow smiling Lego heads, they are trying to remain as gender/race neutral as possible. It all seems to have worked. In the first half of 2015 Lego overtook Mattel (makers of toys like Barbie) to become the world’s biggest toy company in terms of revenue, with takings of over $2.1 billion. In business terms it’s one of the great comebacks. Between 2007 and 2010 sales were growing at 25 per cent per year and profits at 50 per cent per year. And last year the top-five selling lines of Lego were City, Ninjago, Friends, Duplo and Star Wars – all bar the latter being Lego’s own intellectual property. Although they are now refocused on the core of the business, the parks are still doing well and another has just opened in Dubai. “Well,

REBUILDING LEGO

LEGO GROUP FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE 2014 2015 represented the 11th straight year of growth

Revenue increased by 19% to $5.2 billion

Net profit was $1.3 billion

GLOBALISING LEGO PLAY

Children reached via Lego play experiences 85,000,000

Children reached via the Lego Foundation 400,000

Children reached via Lego education 10,000,000

Consumer service contacts more than 1,700,000

18,000,000 Average monthly unique visitors to lego.com

10,300,000 Facebook fans

492,000,000 YouTube channel views

5,000,000 Lego Club members

LEGO FACTS 70

More than 60,000,000,000 Lego elements manufactured

Lego minifigures produced 500,000,000

More than 650,000,000 Lego tyres produced

Number of active Lego element shapes 3,500

REBUILDING LEGO

our ultimate purpose it to reach more children,” Dano says. “To reach more children we need to enter new markets, so of course a Legoland park in a new market is helping – it’s about synergies between selling toys and experiences.” The Lego factory is now working to near full capacity with 120 tonnes of granulate being delivered each day to be heated up and injection moulded to make Lego parts. The factory churns out two million different pieces every hour – about 36,000 a minute – but they cut the range of different elements from 13,000 down to 6,500.

hrough their “return to brick” policy one thing really stands out – they ensured the levels of quality remained high and staff were encouraged and motivated. “Good products are the key,” Rejnholdt Krog insists to Portfolio. “Make a good product and the money comes, because the customer will decide if it’s a success or not.” “We are a premium brand and yes, we’re expensive, but every time there has been a financial crisis the sales of Lego have grown the most,” Christensen says, before explaining that they are now entering the key point in 2016. “Every year there’s a new Christmas wish list so the last two months of each year is where we make 50 per cent of our sales – our aim is to be on that list every year. Competition comes from everywhere. For example, we thought we’d sell the kid a Lego set but Paul Pogba joins Manchester United and he wants a new football shirt instead.” Interestingly though, Lego use Key Performance Indicators – KPI – and Financial is only one of them. They also look at whether the retail stores are happy, what the feedback is from the customers and what they refer to as the employee pulse – are the staff motivated or burned out?

Lego Group HQ in Billund, Denmark

“Only 10 per cent of my bonus is tied into the company making a profit and we have quarterly sit down talks with out bosses,” Christensen says. “It’s important.” After all, when was the last time someone from senior management recognised the work you’re putting in, the late nights and weekends, and acknowledged that? Or just came over and pointed to something you’d worked hard on and said, “Good job”? A former CEO Mads Nipper told The Telegraph newspaper in 2009: “Even in a life-threatening crisis we were discussing, more, ‘How do we treat people?’ rather than how we could save the last penny. People are not just resources.” Recently the 18,000 employees worldwide had a play day where they stopped working and just played. It was to remind them of what the company was about – Lego was naturally involved – but also “for fun”. Lego say their culture is based on openness, trust and the core values: Creativity, Imagination, Fun, Learning, Quality and Care – which should be reflected in everything they do. It defines why people should choose and commit the best of themselves to the organisation, clarifies the “give” and the “get” of the employee relationship and provides a common point of reference for employee management. At a time when companies are cutting budgets, cutting corners and expecting staff to do more with less, it’s notable that Lego came back from tough times to become the biggest in their field by ensuring quality was maintained, not sacrificed. It seems what works with staff also works with the target audience. “We want them to build whatever they can imagine, we just provide the best possible tools and inspiration for them,” Dano says. It’s the kind of thinking we see in successful Silicon Valley companies, but Lego had been doing it decades before. They have a cult following among adults, much the same as Apple, but while Apple fans worshipped at the temple of Steve Jobs, so the Lego devotees are simply about the bricks and creativity. It’s an innovation culture that hires diverse and creative people. They’re just lost focus, but Dano insists they’re really listening now. “When we look at the portfolio for next year we look at what’s been successful in the past and what kids say about the products. Every individual product we get feed back about through a net promoted score which tells us how much people like each product. We get 1.8 million calls and e-mails to our consumer service and respond to all of them, it’s a source of inspiration.” Or as Lego design director Rejnholdt Krog puts it, “We’re back on track and have a lot more planned… it’s going to be awesome.”

LIVING / HOTEL

North Island 72

The private island in the Seychelles, where British royalty and Hollywoodâ€™s A-list go on holiday, is both a conservation project and one of the most luxurious resorts anywhere on earth

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

LIVING / HOTEL

North Island, The Seychelles

PRICE From $3,351 per night

north-island.com

 SEZ

here’s a great line in the comedy 30 Rock where Jack Donaghy and Jerry Seinfeld talk about going on holiday to a place “only rich people know about”. If there were such a place, it’s probably just like this. North Island is the private island where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge decided to go for their honeymoon. (Wills and Kate stayed in villa number four in case you’re interested). It’s also where George Clooney and his bride Amal chose for their honeymoon. It’s been the destination for many others for whom nowhere is off limits and who are in a position to go wherever they want. They can go anywhere, so they choose here. Until 1997 it was just an overgrown granite island, one of 40 inner islands of the Seychelles. Uninhabited by humans for centuries, aside from sporadic explorers who would stop off on their journey to stock up on coconuts and fruit, the main life here were the hundreds of giant tortoises. Around 100 of them still live on the island today and are part of an on-going conservation project, with some being old enough to remember what the island

“Many of the people who can afford to go anywhere in the world choose to go here”

was like in the 1860s. The resort opened in 2003. This wasn’t rushed and certainly wasn’t done cheaply, with vast amounts were spent creating the resort, yet guest numbers have been kept to a minimum. With so few villas on the island you can go for days without seeing another guest and being the only person on one of the beaches is not uncommon. Just ten presidential villas sit amid palm trees, set just back from the beach, each 450 square metres in size with one additional larger villa of 750 square metres at the end. Each one is a home. The villas are self-contained with large master bedrooms, en-suite bathrooms

Words: Matt Pomroy

NORTH ISLAND, THE SEYCHELLES

WHERE TO STAY

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

ON THE HOTEL

featuring big Balinese marble baths, and indoor and outside showers. You have your own deep plunge pool for deskside loafing and lazing about is taken into serious consideration here. There are lots of spots with recliners, sofas, chairs and seats created to maximise doing very little. The flatbeds at the bottom of your own garden are perfect for lying back at night, turning off all the lights and looking at the thousands of stars above. While many resorts have a minibar, here you get a whole pantry. All the food and drink is complementary, so when you finish that bottle of Ruinart champagne, it’s soon replaced. In fact, all the food and drink on the island is included, unless you opt for some of the high-premium wines, of which they have many. The excellent sommelier is worth speaking to and can arrange a wine tasting if you wish. What keeps all this running seamlessly are your own private butlers. And it’s not just having a staff member dedicated to your villa, it really is like having your own butler. Whims are anticipated, breakfast made for you on the stove in your pantry (there’s no set menu, just a board of suggestions, order any time), bookings for activities sorted,

ARRIVE

The hotel has its own helipad (located away from the villas so you don’t hear them) that can fly guests into the resort from Mahe airport in 15 minutes.

EAT

You can eat at the oceanside piazza, on the West Beach or in your villa, but everything is included and menus are more like starting points.

EXTRA TOUCH

You get your own golf cart, letting you explore the island at your own pace. It’s a fine way to go and meet some of the 100 or so giant tortoises.

even babysitting if you fancy leaving the sleeping child and going for a midnight stroll. The level of service is incredible, but if you want total privacy then they’re just a mobile phone call away. For those who venture beyond their villa there’s a spa, an excellent gym with views and beach library and lounge. The 45-metre main pool is stunning and is perched on the side of the island giving you infinity vistas heading out over the beach and ocean. For those who want something more active, there’s a worldclass PADI dive centre (and some excellent dive spots to visit), fishing cruises, glassbottom canoes, paddleboarding and some great hiking trails up to the peak of the island. If you fancy the latter it’s worth going on one as part of a nature walk as the island is a conservation project as well as resort, with tortoises, turtles, birds and over 200 plant species that have been identified and are now flourishing. There are lots of five-star places in the world and more opening each year, but there are just a handful that are truly among that next level of resort. This really is one of them. It’s easy to see why so many of the people who can afford to go anywhere choose to go here.

LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ...for mild weather in Washington, DC, and beyond

Average temp

11°c

London Venice San Francisco Tokyo

ALSO WEAR IN...

10 °C 9 °C 13 °C 12 °C

NOVEMBER

WASHINGTON

Chance of rain: 40%

ADDITIONAL INFO

THE WATERGATE HOTEL The hotel that gave us one of the biggest scandals of all time (and the suffix “gate” for any future ones) has been renovated and reopened. We understand that its excellent whisky bar has already become one of the best places to drink in the city, but as

well as staying in a first-class hotel with a huge political history, it’s also just a five-minute drive from the Lincoln Memorial. From there you can walk past the pool to the Washington monument, the Smithsonian and up to the White House. thewatergatehotel.com

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

ACCESSORIES

1. Hackett double-breasted coat $487 2. Officine Generale chinos $157 3. Gucci striped wool-felt scarf $295 4. Saint Laurent D-frame glasses (via Mr Porter.com) $240 5. Bally Leibovitz bag $1,250 6. Santoni ankle boots $691

Tumi, 99 Degrees, aluminium suitcase $995

Chanel, Allure Homme Sport $125

77 Bremont, Boeing 100, watch $7,595

LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ...for crisp weather in Amsterdam, and beyond

Average temp

7°c

Frankfurt Zurich Vienna Warsaw

ALSO WEAR IN...

5°C 4°C 5°C 3°C

NOVEMBER

AMSTERDAM

Chance of rain: 60%

ADDITIONAL INFO

GUERLAIN SPA If you’ve been out walking in the cold of Amsterdam then a restorative trip to the exceptional Guerlain Spa at the Waldorf Astoria should set you right. It’s open until 8pm so ideal to fit in just before dinner. For those looking for something special, the eight-hour

Imperial Amsterdam Cure (€805) is a full-day while the 90-minute Signature Sensorial Journey (€180) is a less timeconsuming treatment. Upstairs at the same hotel is The Vault Bar, which does excellent cocktails for those looking to revive themselves in more traditional ways.

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

ACCESSORIES 1

Kate Spade phone cover $55

Dolce & Gabbana leather passport cover $295

Isabel Marant gold-tone resin earrings $120

79 1. Miu Miu waxed coat with wool trim $2,815 2. Acne Studios wrap-effect brushed-twill skirt $420 3. Prada leather gloves $420 4. Eugenia Kim faux fur-trimmed cable-knit wool beanie (via Net-a-Porter.com) $245 5. Marc Jacobs patent leather ankle boots $495

Kiehlâ€™s ultra facial cream $48

NOVEMBER LIVING / BRAND YOU SHOULD KNOW

ISSUE 131

Fjällräven The Swedish outdoorwear that has become a cult favourite

FROM THE 2016 RANGE

Polar guide parka $498

Eco-shell anorak $450

Logo T-shirt $40

Kånken rucksack $75

wedish outdoor brand Fjällräven (“arctic fox”) was, for many years, little more than practical outdoor winterwear. It was founded by Åke Nordin in 1960, who started out ten years previously – aged just 14 – making frames for rucksacks in the basement of his parents’ house. Fjällräven expanded the range to clothing, having had the idea to make outerwear from the same material that it was using on backpacks and tents. So durable are its pieces that the company offers a lifetime warranty on some. Now sold in more than 20 countries, the brand has become known among followers for some classic items such as the Greenland jacket, vidda trousers, expedition down jacket and, perhaps most iconically of all, the Kånken rucksack. The Kånken rucksack has gone from children’s accessory to stylishly desirable, having been introduced in the late ’70s for schoolchildren as

a response to a study that found almost 80 per cent of Swedes suffered from some back trouble. Nordin believed that the problems began at school with children carrying heavy books so developed this backpack that evenly distributes the weight on both shoulders. They’re made of Vinylon F – a synthetic fibre that’s waterproof but swells when damp (like natural fibres) to ensure the contents of the bag stay dry. The appeal soon spread well beyond schoolchildren and now over 200,000 of these backpacks – in a huge array of colours – are produced each year, with adults wearing them (it’s OK, two-strapping is acceptable once again) especially as laptop bags. In a way, the Kånken bags perfectly encapsulate what the brand is about: practical clothing and accessories that have an appliance of technology and invention to them, but also a Scandinavian stylish design that works as well in the wild outdoors as on the high street.

“The Kånken backpack has gone from children’s accessory to stylishly desirable”

NOVEMBER LIVING / INVESTMENT

ISSUE 131

Sennheiser HD800 Arguably the best headphones on the market

Single padded band to distribute the weight evenly so their 330 grams feels lighter and more comfortable

Thick around-ear cushions for extra comfort making them ideal for prolonged wear such as on longhaul flights

Larger than normal to fit over your ear, rather than on it

Transducers at a 60-degree angle to your ear canal to give soundstage effect.Sound waves hit your eardrum split seconds apart, instead of together, so you feel a sense of space when you listen to a recording

Perforated stainless steel support on the ear cups at an angle so as to mimic the way sound from speakers is heard. You’ll actually notice the big difference between lossless FLAC files and an MP3

Cloth-wrapped cables with three-metre lead that’s nonmicrophonic, so if it drags on something no sounds or vibration is transferred to the headphones

he first thing about these headphones is they’re not cheap. You’ll pay around $1,400 for a pair, which is a lot for a set of cans if you’re not an industry professional. But if you want to listen to your music on more than an iPod then you’ll notice a big difference with really good headphones. These are technically outstanding, hugely comfortable and handassembled in Germany by one of the top audio companies in the world. You’ll get crisp, bright sound that just appears rather than feeling like it’s coming from somewhere, which also makes them ideal for wearing while watching films – it sonically puts you in the scene, just as a top-end surround-sound system would. If you’re an audiophile looking to invest in something that will serve you well for years, then in the category of ultra-high-end headphones, these are the best all-rounders.

LIVING / VERMOUTH

Bittersweet symphony Vermouth is losing its uncool image and deserves a spot in your drinks cabinet

often subtle, but always complex, flavour. Used well, they make any great bartender look even better.” Unsurprisingly, Goodman has a couple of great serves up his sleeve. If you’re in a rush, mix up a jug of lemonade, lemon juice, sugar, soda and vermouth (red or white work equally well). Or, “to get your night started with a bang”, as he puts it, try a “wet” martini: 30ml Bombay Sapphire gin and 30ml

Martini Extra Dry vermouth stirred over ice with a lemon twist and some olives on the side. The other good news, because it’s fortified with spirit, a bottle of vermouth will stay in perfect condition for a couple of months after being opened, so it will last. Next time you invite friends round for drinks, invest in a bottle or two of vermouth. They’ll wonder why your cocktails taste just like the pros…

Words: Stuart Peskett

here are certain cocktails that have an innate style. The martini. The Manhattan. The Negroni. What do these iconic drinks have in common? They all contain vermouth – the drink that was ubiquitous in the 1970s, usually served with ice and lemonade or soda. But now, vermouth is cool again, thanks to the boom in cocktail culture. Vermouth is an aromatised wine – that is, a wine infused with botanicals to add colour and flavour. These botanicals include those commonly used in gin, such as citrus peel, cinnamon bark and juniper; but the key ingredient that sets vermouth apart is wormwood, which is also where its name comes from (the French pronunciation of the German wermut). Broadly speaking, there are three main types: dry white, sweet white and sweet red. Dry white vermouths will usually be labelled Dry or Extra Dry; sweet whites, Blanc or Bianco; while sweet red vermouths generally come under the Rosso category. French vermouth is generally dry; Italian versions are often sweeter. But in recent years, rosé and amber styles have appeared, along with all manner of weird and wonderful ingredients. But what do you actually do with it? Very simply, it’s the secret weapon in your drinks cabinet. It’s versatile: drink it neat or on the rocks, and you have a beautifully balanced drink right there. A splash perks up a glass of Prosecco and also adds an extra layer of complexity to a G&T. It can even rescue a substandard white wine. But vermouth really shows its magic in a cocktail, and it’s bartenders we need to thank for its revival. JJ Goodman, founder and CEO of the hugely popular London Cocktail Club bar group, is one of the top barmen in the UK. He said: “The best thing about vermouths is the flavour. They’re macerated with heaps of botanicals and then rested to give an

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

Best for a Gibson… DOLIN DRY

Best for a Negroni… PUNT E MES

“Dry martini. Wait…three measures of Gordon’s; one of vodka; half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it over ice, and add a thin slice of lemon peel.” James Bond’s Vesper Martini enjoyed a huge resurgence after Daniel Craig’s intricate cocktail order in Casino Royale. Kina Lillet is now discontinued, but Cocchi Americano is a nearidentical replacement, with plenty of razor-sharp lemon and orange, with a touch of honeyed fruit. $25

Gibson martinis have been served up in bars for over a century and are basically just your classic dry martini with the addition of two cocktail onions, making it one of the cleanest drinks around, with the piquancy of the onion balancing the aromatic gin and vermouth. A dry style of vermouth is needed here, and Dolin’s version is a classic, with a light, floral character that works perfectly in this elegant cocktail. $20

The Negroni is one of the easiest cocktails to make: equal measures of gin, Campari and red vermouth stirred over ice. Actor Orson Welles was a fan; while working in Rome in the 1940s, he proclaimed: “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.” Punt e Mes is the ideal Negroni vermouth. The name means ‘a point and a half’ – a ‘point’ of sweetness and half a point of bitterness. $15

Best for a Rob Roy… CINZANO 1757

Best for a Blood And Sand… GANCIA ROSSO

Best for a Manhattan… ANTICA FORMULA

We’re heading into bigger flavours now, and the Rob Roy is a bold mix of Scotch whisky and Rosso vermouth. Cinzano 1757 is a fine choice due to its full-bodied bottling that stands up to the whisky, while a drop of maraschino syrup adds a softness and sweetness to the drink. The cocktail takes its name from an operetta based on the Scottish folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor. $20

A cocktail that converts those who say they don’t like Scotch. Sweeter and fruitier than the Rob Roy, due to the addition of cherry liqueur and orange juice. Named after Rudolph Valentino’s 1920s’ bullfighting film, bartenders earn their money making one – a hard shake is essential for the allimportant froth. Gancia Rosso as the vermouth is a lighter version with plenty of bittersweet fruit. $17.50

The quintessential post-dinner cocktail, the Manhattan is rich and satisfying with a bittersweet edge. You can order yours dry or ‘perfect’ with a little dry vermouth in the mix, but for after dinner, I’d recommend sweet. Antica Formula is the only choice here – concentrated and complex, loaded with notes of bitter chocolate, coffee and bitter cherries – vermouth on steroids. $45

Approx (70cl) bottle prices

Best for a Vesper Martini… COCCHI AMERICANO

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

Simple Watch Co $169

LIVING / WATCHES

Timex Weekender $40

Tsovet $225

Minimal watches Often bought as a third (or fourth) watch, a weekend knockabout timepiece or part of a collection, the basic minimal watch is a versatile and stylish addition Daniel Wellington $299

Koppel $2,990

Autodromo $875

Alessi $160

Mondaine $268

LIVING / CONSUME

Vogue’s century A celebration of style’s most influential magazine

s British Vogue celebrates its 100th year as the undisputed fashion bible, a limitededition publication has been released to mark the anniversary. Voice Of A Century compiles more than 400 Vogue photographs and illustrations, correspondence and covers, plus new interviews with 100 contributors. Limited to only 1,916 bound copies, each 504page volume is individually signed by at least seven of the magazine’s major contributors. Previously unseen material includes Jerry Hall on those iconic shoots with Grace Coddington; Jean Shrimpton on her partnership with David Bailey; and Kate Moss reliving elephant rides with Christy Turlington in Nepal.

The magazine’s influence has been vast, discovering and championing young designers, writers, artists, photographers and models as well as documenting wars and cultural change, and presenting fashion from the most unlikely places. Vogue was always more than just a catalogue of expensive clothes to buy and a magazine that – to the credit of the publishers – was well funded and well staffed. As a result, it was able to make itself into an iconic and profitable publication that simultaneously reflected and shaped British culture and history for over a century. This book is more than just fashion, it’s a record of the times. Voice Of A Century is available in limited numbers for $900

88 First cover - September 15th 1916

April 1938

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

March 1948 April 1955

89 April 1924 July 1959

NOVEMBER ISSUE 131

LIVING / COLUMN

Why Uber just works By Clayton M Christensen

he value of creating the right set of experiences in a circumstancespecific job is clearly not universally understood. I don’t know anyone who relishes the experience of renting a car, for example. Even when nothing goes wrong, it’s almost always an unpleasant experience, with attendant frustrations and anxieties. Simply Google “car rental reviews” and you’ll see how much customers love the experience of renting a car. It’s not hard to find hashtags that tell us how well the carrental industry is serving its customers: you’ll easily find #hertzsucks and #avissucks on Twitter, to name just two. Online you’ll find an onslaught of complaints, most mentioning nothing about the cars the companies rent, but focusing instead on the experience that accompanied actually renting the car. Yet with the exception of some minor tinkering at the edge (skip the counter at the airport for frequent customers), car rental companies continue to compete almost exclusively on price or the variety of cars they have to offer. Customers actively seek out workarounds – even if they’re imperfect. If they’re travelling for business and they’re senior enough in a company, they might impose on junior local staff to get the rental car and then pick them up at arrivals. Or hire a car service for the full day. I know of one guy who, when his plane was unexpectedly diverted, paid for an Uber to get him all the way from Milwaukee to Chicago rather than endure the stress and hassle of renting a car. These workarounds should be warning signs to the car-rental industry, which may find itself facing an onslaught from new competitors in the near future as the job of “mobility” takes shape. Falling to deliver the experiences that help your customers solve their Jobs To Be Done leaves you vulnerable to disruption as better solutions come along and customers swiftly jump ship. By contrast, one company that clearly understands the stakes is Uber. In the last

few years, few companies have captured the media’s attention like Uber. In my opinion, Uber has been successful because it’s perfectly nailed a Job To Be Done. Yes, Uber can often offer a nice car to take you from point A to point B, but that’s not where it’s built its competitive advantage. The experiences that come with hiring Uber solve customers’ Jobs To Be Done are better than the existing alternatives. That’s the secret to its success. Everything about the experience of being a customer – including the emotional and social dimensions – has been thought through. Who wants to have to out-manoeuvre other poor schlubs on the same street corner as you are trying to hail a cab? You don’t want to either pay for a car service to wait outside your meeting or be at its mercy when you’re finally ready to call it to come back and get you. With Uber, you simply push a few buttons on your mobile phone and you know that in three minutes or seven minutes a specific driver will arrive to pick you up. Now you can relax and just wait. You don’t have to worry if you have enough cash in your wallet or fear that if you swipe your credit card in that taxi machine, you’ll get a call from your bank wondering if you’ve recently made purchases in some state you’ve never even been to. Calling an Uber has even more potential to ease your anxieties about getting into a cab alone. With Uber there’s a record of your request, you know specifically who is picking you up, and you know from the driver’s ratings that he or she is reliable. Uber isn’t just competing with taxis and car services, it’s also competing with people opting to take the subway home or calling a friend. Organisations that focus on making the product itself better and better are missing what may be the most powerful causal mechanism of all – what are the experiences that customers seek in not only purchasing, but in using this product? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you’re probably not going to be hired.

“Uber has been successful because it’s perfectly nailed a Job To Be Done”

From Competing Against Luck by Clayton M Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S Duncan. Reprinted courtesy of HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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