Not just your usual suspects like Apple and Google, but a “Polymath list” with all kinds of interesting industries, companies and products represented:
Trader Joe’s: “stores carry 4,000 different products, compared to typical grocery stores' 50,000. This meticulous stocking helps it sell $1,750 per square foot--twice as much as Whole Foods.”
“In early 2010, Burberry was the first to simulcast its runway shows in 3-D”
“A ton of phones can provide 20 times more gold than a ton of gold ore. The company's recycling process is based on methods long used by Dowa to get metals from raw ore.”
“SynCardia makes the Total Artificial Heart, the only complete heart-replacement device approved by the FDA.”
“Nike rescued 13 million used plastic bottles, melted them down, and wove them into polyester. Then they created high-performance jerseys (eight bottles per shirt) worn by nine teams during last summer's World Cup.”
“The complexity of Russian, with its Lego set of prefixes and roots, forces Yandex to create more nuanced algorithms.”
“Amyris has made headlines for producing renewable synthetic fuel, but few know about the company's health-care vision: saving the lives of malaria patients.”
“If you witnessed mind-boggling visual wizardry at the cinema in 2010, chances are you can thank Double Negative. The London firm created awe-inducing imagery for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Iron Man 2, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Inception”
“the demographic that most over-indexes on the usage of mobile devices in this country is young Hispanic males, period. Second, Latinos have adopted social media at a faster rate than the rest of the population. Those two things are very good for us (Univision) because the young Hispanic demo is a huge part of our audience.”
“The genius of Snøhetta buildings is in their "architecture of engagement"; in other words, these designs consider a structure's social experience -- how the user enters, passes through, and lives in a building -- to be as important as its form.”
“Brazilian-born Neeleman (of Jetblue fame) launched Azul ("blue" in Portuguese) to bring the low-cost airline model to Brazil, where the growing middle class--about 100 million strong--helps fuel Azul's growth.”
“Stamen's big dream is even loftier: to use data-visualization techniques to make information on crucial scientific topics, such as climate change, accessible to all.”
“Seventy percent of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa, but less than 1% of the world's chocolate is made there. Tim McCollum and Brett Beach--introduced to Madagascar and each other while in the
Peace Corps--founded Madécasse in 2008 to keep more economic benefit within the island nation.”
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