Interesting Fast Company writing - on GoPro, DonorsChoose and Dutch flood prevention

A few different interesting pieces from Fast Company Magazine included two features and one brief mention of a company.

From the November issue was the fairly long "Against The Tide" by Jeff Chu on flood prevention measures in the Netherlands and the March "50 Most Innovative Companies" issue included two interesting stories, one on DonorsChoose and one GoPro.

The feature was "Beyond School Supplies: How DonorsChoose is Crowdsourcing Real Education Reform" by Peg Tyre on the #9 company on the list and later on was a short missive on GoPro, the #39 company and a fascinating one to me in how they've built a lifestyle brand to sell a piece of hardware (reminiscent of how Red Bull has created a lifestyle around an energy drink).

GoPro story by Bill Gifford in Businessweek

A terribly interesting story in a recent Businessweek was "GoPro Goes Big as a Hybrid Media Company/Videocam Maker" by Bill Gifford and it brought to mind past writing on another company that's built a huge business based on the lifestyle around their product, just as much if not more so than around the product itself.

"Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac" was written by Duff McDonald for Businessweek in 2011 and then there was a Teressa Iezzi feature on the company at #29 on the 2012 Most Innovative Companies list by Fast Company Magazine.

Really interesting on both companies and the approach they've taken towards becoming fairly iconic brands.

Businessweek writing - on Netflix, Google X, GoPro & Southern New Hampshire U

There's been a few pieces from Businessweek over the past few weeks that stood out as particularly interesting with two cover features and two smaller stories.

From the May 13-19 issue was the feature "Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley's Elite". Written by Ashlee Vance, it's a terribly interesting piece that starts off with the sentence from Vance that "on a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes." Also, from this issue was "A Little College That's a Giant Online" on Southern New Hampshire University. As opposed to a company like Coursera, Southern New Hampshire is a traditional college that also has a significant online education offering.

From the May 27-Jun 2 issue was "Inside Google's Secret Lab" by Brad Stone and it's fascinating stuff on the Google X division within the company that's devoted to "moonshot" ideas or problems that Lab Director Astro Teller says about which "over some long but not unreasonable period of time we can make that problem go away." Additionally of interest from this Businessweek edition was the extremely short piece "Ask a Billionaire: GoPro CEO Nick Woodman".