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.

Fast Company Mar 2012 "50 Most Innovative Companies" Issue

There was a bunch of interesting content from the March edition of Fast Company Magazine. It was the annual "50 Most Innovative Companies" issue and below are the businesses and associated writing that stood out (doesn't discount the companies on the full list not noted here, just that I didn't read anything on them that was terribly new to me)...

#5 - Square: There was a fairly lengthy profile of founder Jack Dorsey done by Ellen McGirt. It's well written and interesting content on a fascinating guy (Dorsey also co-founded Twitter) and company doing incredibly well in the fortified barriers to entry financial services industry.

#12 - Southern New Hampshire University: Excellent feature piece done by Anya Kamenetz about online education offerings from the traditional not for profit university.

#13 - Jawbone: Interesting profile from Farhad Manjoo on the consumer electronics maker noted as "one of the hottest private companies in the world."

#19 - Airbnb: Another long piece, this one by Austin Carr, on the successful vacation (but, not exclusively) rental facilitation company. That description sure leaves something to be desired so fortunately the Carr story details well Airbnb and its design-centric focus.

#24 - Starbucks: Featured was an excellent look by Jon Gertner at the company and how its returned to success by focusing less on simple replication expansion and more on performance and innovation. Also of interest from the piece was mention of future growth into the area of health and wellness.

#29 - Red Bull Media House: Red Bull an interesting company in the unconventional way its grown in part through extreme sports affiliation and Teressa Iezzi details in this profile its extension of sports sponsorship to a content division.

#34 - Chipotle: Interesting profile by Danielle Sacks on the fast food company with detail beyond what I've seen about efforts around an organic, sustainable and humane food supply. Mention also made of a Chipotle YouTube video with now 6M views.

#41 - Kickstarter: Probably the shortest piece of those I've highlighted, but still an interesting one by Rachel Arndt on the platform being more and more heavily used for funding creative ventures (noted in the piece that 17 Sundance films used Kickstarter).