Interesting business writing by Oldham, Leonard, Brustein & Brodesser-Akner

There was few different interesting stories from Bloomberg Businessweek lately, with two features and two short pieces to note here.

The longer stories were "The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo" by Joshua Brustein and "Even the World's Top Life Coaches Need a Life Coach. Meet Martha Beck" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

The latter of the two particularly stood out to me both due to the compelling first-person writing from Brodesser-Akner towards the end and the insights attributed to Beck, with the two quotes below related to the idea of acting in ways true to oneself...

"If it makes you feel good, do more of it. And if it makes you feel horrible, maybe you should back off a little."

"How did I come to believe this, and does it serve me to continue believing it?"

Two smaller pieces that I found of note were "The Party’s Over in Alaska" by Jennifer Oldham on Governor Bill Walker reacting to the impact of low oil prices on the state's economy and from Devin Leonard, "Making No Cents," a story related to his book Neither Snow nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service.

Interesting business writing - on hacking medical devices, building a self-driving car, and the Tesla Gigafactory

Three different pieces of business writing that struck me as interesting recently included an important look at medical device security and two pieces about automotive innovation.

From Businessweek in November was "It’s Way Too Easy to Hack the Hospital" by Monte Reel and Jordan Robertson with a sobering look at the danger that can arise from minimal security around both medical devices and internet firewalls in hospitals.

The two related pieces were from Business and Fast Company respectively with "The First Person to Hack the iPhone Built a Self-Driving Car. In His Garage" by Ashlee Vance and "Elon Musk Powers Up: Inside Tesla's $5B Gigafactory" by Max Chafkin. The piece by Vance is about a pretty brilliant inventor in George Hotz and for the Fast Company feature, Chafkin was apparently granted the greatest outsider access so far to the Tesla battery factory outside Reno.

Interesting business writing - on Uber, Slack, Google Cardboard, and financial manipulation

Recently there were a few excellent pieces of business writing from the latest issues of Fast Company and Bloomberg Businessweek.

From Businessweek was the cover story "Was Tom Hayes Running the Biggest Financial Conspiracy in History?" by Liam Vaughan and Gavin Finch. About manipulation of the Libor rate that banks use to borrow money from each other, it's a tremendously interesting look at widespread malfeasance and the role of one man in particular in it.

The Fast Company cover story was written by Max Chafkin with "What Makes Uber Run" on the lightening-fast growing transportation company and it's founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick. Additionally from this issue of FC was a solid feature by Rick Tetzeli titled "Slack's Workplace Revolution" on the office communication software company and a short missive on the low-cost virtual reality device, Google Cardboard.

Business writing - on Mark Hurd, writing code, painting for fun, and high-priced medicine

Some really solid business stories over the past several months included a profile from Fortune Magazine and three different features from Bloomberg Businessweek.

The Fortune piece was by Adam Lashinsky with "The redemption of Oracle's Mark Hurd" and the Businessweek stories covered a lot of ground with one a magazine issue-length look at code, one a piece on painting and drinking for fun and one about an extremely expensive, and effective, treatment for hepatitis C.

The Businessweek pieces are "What is Code?" by Paul Ford, "How Paint Nite Is Saving the American Bar" by Joel Stein, and "Pharma Execs Don't Know Why Anyone Is Upset by a $94,500 Miracle Cure" by Paul Barrett and Robert Langreth. All are interesting and the Barrett and Langreth piece includes below...

"Gilead Sciences of Foster City, Calif., introduced Harvoni, which completely cures the vast majority of people with the most common type of hepatitis C and does it in just three months with few significant side effects. Gilead charges $94,500 for the 12-week treatment."

Solid business writing - on Elon Musk & Tesla, wine thieves, ILM & Dr. Charles Arntzen

Some of the pieces are from a week or two ago, but there's been some really interesting business writing that I haven't posted on up until now.

From Businessweek were two excellent features, starting off with "Elon Musk's Space Dream Almost Killed Tesla," excerpted from the recently released Ashlee Vance book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. It's a fascinating look at the Tesla and Space X CEO and related to Tesla were two additional interesting pieces, first a transcript of Musk's speech introducing Tesla Energy and then San Jose Mercury News article "Is Tesla's Powerwall home battery worth the price?" by Jonathan Fahey.

The other Businessweek story to note here was "A Pinot Noir: Hunting the Thieves Behind a Rash of Six-Figure Wine Heists" by Claire Suddath, a highly interesting read which brought to mind the Max Potter book Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine.

The other two pieces of really interesting recent business writing to mention were from other sources with Alex French and Howie Kahn for Wired writing "Inside the Magic Factory: The Untold Story of ILM, a Titan That Forever Changed Film," an oral history of the George Lucas created Industrial Light & Magic, and Adam Bluestein for Fast Company writing "Meet Ebola's Soft-Spoken, Plant-Loving Arch Nemisis" on Dr. Charles Arntzen, who came in at number one on the Fast Company "100 Most Creative People 2015" list.

Interesting Bloomberg Businessweek pieces - by Wieners, Vance, Clark & Coen

There's been some particularly interesting writing from Bloomberg Businessweek magazine over the past few weeks including a great feature story and multiple smaller pieces.

The feature was "Dying at Europe's Doorstep" by Brad Wieners and it's an important look at refugees from Africa dying as they try to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and the husband and wife team of Chris & Regina Catrambone attempting to rescue as many as possible. The parts of the story about many Europeans not wanting the immigrants to come there made me think of a June 2013 blog post I wrote linking to stories of xenophobic behavior and also fascinating from the Wieners piece was mention of Catrambone partnering with The World's Most Dangerous Places author Robert Young Pelton.

The smaller pieces from BW that struck me over the past few weeks included two at least in part by Ashlee Vance. Along with Jack Clark, he wrote "How Amazon Swooped in to Own Cloud Services" and excerpted from Vance's May 19 book release of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future was "Elon Musk Had a Deal to Sell Tesla to Google in 2013."

The other short piece to note here was written by Jessica Coen with "Nick Kokonas Is Selling Tickets to Dinner" about the restaurateur, who co-owns three Chicago-area restaurants with chef Grant Achatz, and his forthcoming for wide release restaurant reservation system Tock that revolves around diners prepaying for meals and flexible pricing based on time selected.

Interesting business writing - on Sirius & Howard Stern, Disney & MagicBands and Ikea & expansion

Three interesting pieces of recent business writing covered covered subjects across the corporate world with stories on Disney, SiriusXM, and Ikea.

Cliff Kuang for Wired wrote "Disney's $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband" and this was probably the most fascinating to me of the three in that it was about a compelling new technology. MagicBands are wristbands that visitors to Walt Disney World in Orlando (the bands likely to make it to Disneyland by the end of 2016) can wear to help improve their experience at the park... with Disney of course benefiting from this as well.

For Fortune Magazine, Beth Kowitt wrote "How Ikea took over the world" on the home furnishings retailer and it's forays into new geographies being successful in large part to an attention to research on the markets and what consumers there want.

The last piece to note here was by Felix Gillette for Bloomberg Businessweek with "Can SiriusXM Survive Without Howard Stern?" on the satellite radio company. The piece covers how SiriusXM has been successful in recent years and contract renewal negotiations with Stern, it's most well-known on-air talent and likely the number one driver of subscribers for the company.

Interesting business writing - on Ive from Apple, Hoover from Product Hunt & solid business advice

Some recent interesting business writing ran the gamut in terms of types of writing with the three pieces to note here being a blog post, a magazine piece on a startup founder, and brilliantly done 17,000 word profile on perhaps the most influential product design guru in the world.

The long profile was for The New Yorker by Ian Parker who wrote "The Shape of Things to Come" on Apple SVP Design Jonathan Ive. Really a remarkably detailed and fascinating to read piece on someone whose tastes help set the technology used by so many.

The other profile was by Adam Satariano and Eric Newcomer for Businessweek with "Why Startups Want This 28-Year-Old to Really Like Them" about Ryan Hoover, founder and CEO of the very cool and easy to digest (via once daily emails) tech curation site Product Hunt.

The blog post was by entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis who in January posted "How to go from a nobody to a somebody" to his blog. The post contains a lot of solid advice about how someone can work their way into being known in business today, and notes the aforementioned Ryan Hoover. Calacanis is a guy who I came across from him interviewing venture capitalist Chris Sacca (which I wrote about here), puts on the annual startup event Launch Festival (with this year's iteration March 2-4 in San Francisco), and had a quote of his pretty prominently featured in the book Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler (with below about Google CEO Larry Page... and taken from Google Books):

Fast Company & Businessweek writing

Some particularly interesting recent business writing included pieces from Fast Company Magazine as well as Businessweek. 

The March 2015 issue of Fast Company was its annual "50 Most Innovative Companies" edition, with a number of interesting companies featured. Three that stood out as particularly compelling and that I hadn't heard of before are: Fuhu, maker of the Nabi tablet for kids, American Giant, a US apparel (largely men's casual to this point) company, and Revolution Foods, a company providing healthy and affordable school lunches. From the same section on innovative companies was a "Sectors" area accessible from the top right with the "10 Most Innovative Companies" from each of 30+ different areas of business and one last interesting thing to note from this issue of Fast Company was "Medium's Secret Weapon: Design" by Om Malik on Ev Williams and his publishing company.

The shortest of the recent Businessweek pieces of particular interest was "Tesla Wants to Build a Battery for Your House" by Dana Hull and Mark Chediak on a coming offering around energy storage and recent issues of Businessweek magazine had two feature stories to note here. "Boom" by Nick Summers was an entertaining tale with the subtitle "No American ATM Has Even Been Robbed With Explosive Gas. The Same was True in Britain - Until 2013. Now There Have Been More than 90. Inside the Birth of a Bomb Spree" and "The Semiconductor Revolutionary" by Ashlee Vance was on the material gallium nitride, or GaN, a faster and cheaper potential replacement for Silicon in transistors.

Great pieces on water and resource utilization

There's been a few few different pieces (and one video) I've seen recently that struck me as fascinating on the subject of water as a resource.

From a recent issue of Businessweek was "Israel's Water Ninja" by Amanda Little on the Israeli Integrated Water Network Management startup TaKaDu. It's a remarkably interesting look at water efficiency and identifying leakage on a widespread utility scale where the losses prevented can be enormous.

Related to water usage required was a piece from the Jan issue of Outside Magazine with "The Top-Secret Food That Will Change the Way You Eat" by Rowan Jacobsen. Written about the company Beyond Meat and its forthcoming Beast Burger, it's a well written and important look at the idea of getting away from eating beef, among other reasons for the huge amounts of water needed to generate a pound for eating.

For the Dec/Jan issue of Fast Company was "We're Running Out of Water" by Jon Gertner, an interesting piece that notes how water systems, and the concept of desalination from saltwater to drinking water, can have fairly entrenched markets, effectively limiting the amount of innovation and people looking to enter the field.

The last thing to note here on the subject of water isn't actually a written piece, but rather a video on the Google Ventures website with Kevin Rose interviewing Scott Harrison of the highly regarded Charity: Water. Just a fascinating guy doing important work.

Interesting business writing - on Salesforce, Amazon, Jet, Twitter & Datanyze

Some of the most interesting business writing I've seen lately included three really well-written feature stories, two insightful opinion pieces and a cool short piece about asking.

The first of the features to note here was for Businessweek with "Marc Benioff's Philanthropic Mission: San Francisco" by Brad Stone on efforts by the Salesforce CEO and it was a solid look at efforts by Benioff to give back.

The other two features definitely are related with Austin Carr for Fast Company writing "The Real Story Behind Jeff Bezo's Fire Phone Debacle And What It Means for Amazon's Future," a story perhaps somewhat disquieting for Amazon shareholders, and then Brad Stone in the latest Businessweek writing "Amazon Bought This Man's Company. Now He's Coming for Them." Stone's piece is on the forthcoming eCommerce site Jet.com which will follow a Costco-like model of steep discounts (that can escalate depending on shopper choices made) and membership dues. It's definitely an intriguing idea that's being launched by Marc Lore, formerly of Quidsi, a company that Amazon acquired to get its Diapers.com site.

The opinion pieces I found particularly interesting recently were about Twitter, which I love using and marvel at what it can do. "There’s Something About Twitter" was by venture capitalist Fred Wilson for his AVC blog and Ev Williams (one of the founders of Twitter and I guy I find to be brilliant) wrote to Medium "A mile wide, an inch deep" about user metrics for the site and the point of the whole thing.

The final piece to note here was by Eugene Kim for Business Insider with "How Cold Emails Led This 29-Year-Old To Get Funded By Mark Cuban And Google." About Ilya Semin, CEO of the startup Datanyze, and his asking for product and business concept feedback from experts, it was a really interesting piece in which Kim attributed sage advice to the company founder with "Semin says people are generally always willing to help, especially when you're not asking for money. He always asked for feedback first, and that's what propelled his business to early success."

The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

The Innovators by Walter Isaacson was an interesting business book from the accomplished writer, leader of the Aspen Institute and former CEO of CNN as well as Managing Editor of Time. Isaacson previously wrote the bestselling biography Steve Jobs (which I wrote about here) and The Innovators features the subtitle How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. The book covers a tremendous amount of ground, with some of the earlier sections perhaps not as interesting if someone interested primarily in the more recent past, and a recurring theme throughout is the importance of collaboration.

Chapters of the book:

Ada, Countess of Lovelace - chronicles the woman born in 1815 and often credited as having the ideas behind the first computer.

The Computer - Isaacson wrote of computing efforts before and during WWII, "great innovations are usually the result of ideas that flow from a number of sources. An invention, especially one as complex as the computer, usually comes not from an individual brainstorm but from a collaboratively woven tapestry of creativity."

Programming - from this chapter it was interesting to read of the huge role played by woman in writing the first computer software.

The Transistor - Isaacson introduces the computer pioneers Robert Noyce (written about in a 1983 Esquire profile by Tom Wolfe) and Gordon Moore (source of Moore's Law) who were first hired by William Shockley into Shockley Semiconductor and left to form Fairchild Semiconductor.

The Microchip - Fairchild then became too bureaucratic and Noyce and Moore teamed up with Andy Grove and started Intel with venture capital money from Arthur Rock.

Video Games - sort of the harbinger of things to come with computers for personal use.

The Internet - started off with government funding towards the idea of enabling communications to continue in the event of a nuclear strike.

The Personal Computer - similar to the previously stated idea about collaboration at work.

Software - heavily featured the duos of Bill Gates and Paul Allen & Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

Online - covered email and bulletin boards.

The Web - Isaacson noted huge contributions from Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen (via the Mosaic browser), Ev Williams (blogging), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) & Larry Page and Sergey Brin (search).

Ada Forever - the book then closes with a return to Ada Lovelace and a tying together of the arts and sciences.

Really an excellent book from Isaacson that anyone interested in computing technology would likely enjoy.

Interesting business writing - on Tesla & Google related topics

Some interesting business writing I've seen lately included two large features from Fortune along with several short pieces of note published elsewhere.

The Fortune stories were "Inside Elon Musk's $1.4 Billion Score" by Peter Elkind and "Google's Larry Page: The Most Ambitious CEO in the Universe" by  Miguel Helft. Both were interesting pieces of writing with the Elkind story having the particularly intriguing tale of how Tesla Motors went about deciding on Reno as the location for the forthcoming electric car battery gigafactory.

The first of the smaller pieces to mention here was also Tesla related with Ashlee Vance for the Businessweek site last week posting "Tesla Grabs a New (Old) Spokesman From Square" about Ricardo Reyes returning to head Communications at Tesla. The background that Reyes has is fascinating, particularly in relation to the idea of narrative and storytelling within business communication.

The last two pieces to cover are very much connected to one another with Jordan Shapiro for Forbes writing "Is Everything Good About 'Minecraft' Gone?" about "active vs. passive computer time" in relation to viewing Minecraft videos on YouTube and then James Hong posting "Introducing Cakey: A better way for your kids to watch YouTube" to the site Medium.

Interesting business writing - on Keyssa, Anthony Bourdain & income equality

Three different pieces of interesting business writing I've seen included stories from Fast Company, New Republic and Businessweek.

The Fast Company piece was "Anthony Bourdain Has Become the Future of Cable News, and He Couldn't Care Less" by Rob Brunner. It's an interesting look at Bourdain, the chef, author and television host of the Sunday night CNN show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.

From Businessweek was "Keyssa Promises to Let You 'Kiss' Your Cords Goodbye" by Brad Stone on Keyssa, with Nest CEO Tony Fadell as Chairman of the Board, working on extremely fast wireless data transfer.

The last piece to note here was by Michael Lewis for New Republic with "Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone—Especially the Wealthy" on the book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust by Darrell M. West. It's great writing from Lewis on an important subject.

Interesting business pieces - by Stone, Carr & Ringen

Three compelling pieces of recent business writing included cover stories from both Businessweek and Fast Company as well as an additional Fast Company feature.

The Businessweek piece was "Tim Cook Interview: The iPhone 6, the Apple Watch, and Remaking a Company's Culture" and an interesting look by Brad Stone and Adam Satariano at Apple and it's CEO.

The Fast Company pieces were "The $3.2 Billion Man: Can Google's Newest Star Outsmart Apple?" by Austin Carr on Tony Fadell and Nest as well as "Tastier, Healthier, And Animal-Free: Can Ethan Brown Reinvent Meat?" by Jonathan Ringen on the company Beyond Meat. This last story in particular was a fascinating one with Brown's company offering a becoming widely available substitute for meat that has all the flavor and proteins, but without the negative ramifications of meat. Ringen in his story noted it taking 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of steak, a figure that seems high, but is actually lower than the 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat that was noted in the book Abundance that I reviewed a month ago.

Interesting Businessweek writing - by Waldman & Vance

There's been a number of interesting pieces from Businessweek recently with feature stories out of the September 8-14 issue by Ashlee Vance and Peter Waldman and two additional short pieces by Vance.

The story from Waldman was "How to Get Into an Ivy League College—Guaranteed" on Steven Ma and his Bay Area-based ThinkTank Learning. It's a pretty fascinating read that shows the lengths some families will go to in order to help get kids into the best schools.

The Vance feature was "Silicon Valley's Most Hated Patent Troll Stops Suing and Starts Making" and an interesting look at both why the Seattle-based Intellectual Ventures so reviled in tech circles and new initiatives at the company.

Also by Vance, the same magazine issue had the short pieces "As Software and Hardware Advance Together, the Next Innovation Wave Rises" on the great advantage held by companies like Apple, Tesla Motors and Nest (now part of Google) and for the BW website Vance did "Why Microsoft Might Pay $2 Billion for Minecraft," with this last piece bringing to mind Robin Sloan's excellent "The secret of Minecraft" piece for Medium.

Interesting business pieces - on high-end coffee, stealth boats and Twitter

Three different interesting pieces of business writing I've seen recently ran the gamut of subjects included coffee, a new boat engineered to evade radar and Twitter.

The latest issue of Businessweek had the Caroline Winter feature "This Stealth Attack Boat May Be Too Innovative for the Pentagon" on entrepreneur Gregory Sancoff and his company Juliet Marine, maker of an invisible to radar small winged boat, Ghost. It was a fascinating read on some remarkably engineered technology and will be interesting to see if it's adopted by the military.

For Fast Company Magazine, Danielle Sacks wrote the excellent feature "The Multimillion Dollar Quest to Brew the Perfect Cup of Coffee" on artisinal third wave coffeemaking efforts (with the standard offering from Starbucks as second wave). The piece from Sacks covers everything from heavily venture capital funded Blue Bottle Coffee to the company Alpha Dominche and its up to $16K Steampunk coffeemaker as well as Starbucks' increased rollout of the high-end Clover cofeemaker in it's stores.

The final piece to note here is one I came across a few months back and was actually written three years ago. For his venture capital focused site AVC in 2009, Fred Wilson wrote a short post on Twitter usage titled "The Logged Out User (continued)" and it's an interesting look on how Twitter is used in different ways by different people, and what a great thing that is for the company.

Excellent business writing - by Riley, Vance & Thurston

Three interesting and well-done pieces of recent business writing included two stories from Businessweek and a post done to the site TechCrunch.

The larger of the two Businessweek pieces was by Michael Riley with "How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq." It's a fascinating in-depth look at what appears to be a government-sponsored break-in to Nasdaq, done for reasons unknown. It was a really compelling and somewhat chilling story that brought to mind for me the Michael Lewis book Flash Boys that I wrote on a few months ago.

From a more recent BW issue was "Netflix's Ken Florance: The Man Who Keeps the Video Streaming" by Ashlee Vance. It's a short and interesting piece that covers how Netflix paying Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for better connectivity... something that wouldn't be required were there net neutrality.

The last solid piece of writing to note here was "Christensen Vs. Lepore: A Matter Of Fact," posted by Thomas Thurston to TechCrunch. Thurston is a guy who I worked with back when he was in college and his essay done in response to criticism of Harvard professor and author Clayton Christensen by a fellow Harvard professor. I've a few times posted on work from Christensen (best known for his writing around "Disruption Theory" in business) and Thurston provides some solid logic in support of  the theory as a way to predict the success or failure of a business.

Businessweek writing on HP & Monsato

Some recent interesting Businessweek writing included pieces on corporate behemoths Hewlett-Packard and Monsato.

The cover story of the latest issue to arrive was "Inside Monsanto, America's Third-Most-Hated Company" by Drake Bennett and it provided a balanced look that covers Monsato's technology to aid farmers as well as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) used in food production, their many detractors as well as benefits of GMO usage.

On Hewlett-Packard were two different pieces by Ashlee Vance, first a short story for the web and then an even shorter, but still with new information, piece for the magazine. "With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer" was followed up by "Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?" and they covered the company's long-range bet on new hardware technology based on memristors and silicon photonics. Really fascinating stuff that will be interesting to see how it develops.

Businessweek writing of note - on IBM, MLB Advanced Media & Tankchair LLC

Recent issues of Businessweek included three stories that stoood out to me as particularly interesting, with one on an absolutely inspiring small company.

The May 26-June 1 issue featured as its cover story "The Trouble with IBM" and it was a fascinating piece by Nick Summers that noted how the once high-flying technology company now known in some circles more for its financial engineering of performance results than actual growth.

The June 9-22 "Global Tech" issue included two pieces to mention here with the smaller of them "How Major League Baseball Helps ESPN Stream World Cup Soccer" by Ira Boudway about MLB Advanced Media (or BAM), which I two years ago linked to a Fast Company article on.

Additionally in this issue was a story noted by Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel as one that may be his "favorite story we've published in 2014." The piece was by Joshua Green and titled "The Incredible Stair-Climbing, Self-Parking, Amphibious Wheelchair" on the company Tankchair LLC. Really a great story about Brad Soden and the company that came out of his desire to improve quality of life for his paralyzed wife and now helps many seriously injured veterans.