The Science of Success: In this series, we’ll scan the latest scientific, academic, and professional literature, looking at everything from psychology to physics to bring you new insights on how to be more successful. Ours is the Project-Based Economy: tasks once performed by steady teams of professionals working together over long periods of time are […]

I ran out of business cards about a year ago, and I haven’t reordered them since. It’s not because I didn’t hand out my business cards. I did. I gave them out every time I was asked for one. I even put a small stack in the pocket of every coat and backpack I owned. […]

One day, a 21-year-old college dropout living at his parents’ place in Los Altos, Calif., was fiddling with electronics in his family’s garage. In that moment, he had an idea: He wanted to build a personal computer that would revolutionize the world of technology. There was just one problem. Sure, he took some creative courses […]

Influencers are people who have a following within a specific niche. People respect who they are, what they have to say, and the knowledge that they have to offer. An influencer’s following and their reputation as an expert is why they can be especially valuable for a startup company. Influencers are the people who go […]

It’s no secret that working from home is full of distractions. You’re the only one who seems to realize that you’re on the clock. The kids are calling you, the dogs are barking, the doorbell is constantly buzzing, and your spouse is asking a million questions and leaving you a to-do list. And let’s not […]

Andrew Gutterson works in pictures and thinks in sounds. His day job is at Corbis, the massive company that licenses digital images and videos. In his spare time, he’s a beatboxer. Between the two, Gutterson says he’s a pretty happy man. But with beatboxing, Gutterson says he gets to express what images can’t cover: the […]

In the weeks leading up to David Letterman’s very last show, a procession of entertainers—from Tom Hanks to Tina Fey—stopped by his studio to thank him for inventing a new dialect of American television, a funny and irreverent language that inspired many talented young men and women to take risks and try out for a […]

For two years I worked at a newspaper where I sat in an office with no windows in front of a desktop dating from the ’90s. Once or twice a week, I’d share the space with my company’s accountant. Except for the occasional “good morning” to my co-workers, it was all business. Now walk inside […]