bigthinkeditor

The fast fashion retail model has been taken to a new level by U.K.-based rock-bottom price retailer Primark. A case study of why ‘no bells, no whistles’ works for it.

Jobs are key to economic growth so what can be learnt from the organizations that create the most employment? Global is the way to go and consumer orientation is key.

Top entrepreneurs say new products or services usually need many ‘pivots’ to find a successful formula. Here’s how to make those course corrections faster and more efficient.

Most innovation efforts are doomed to fail; they direct focus away from what is required to succeed instead of onto how to create more value for customers.

A robot around the size of a human hand has already climbed a 1,500ft rope up the Grand Canyon, driven the Le Mans circuit for 24 hours, and is set to do Hawaii’s triathlon.

Will there will come a time when putting up an all-glass building is like wearing a fur coat? About 90,000 birds are killed each year by flying into buildings in New York City alone.

Home prices in many famous cities are over $1,000 per square foot but MIT architects from the “1K House” project have already produced a $5,925 home prototype.

Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, on how entrepreneurs can disrupt major industries, although it’s like “staring into the face of death.”

Orthopedic surgical trainee Mark Frame 3D printed a model of a bone from a CT scan, as preparation for surgery, for a fraction of the usual price of such a model.

Two decades after the concept of ‘sustainability’ shifted from a financial to an environmental association, corporations are seeing the business case for focusing on the environment.

British scientists hope to use a huge balloon and hosepipe to shoot particles into the atmosphere–like an erupting volcano–and cool down Earth. A prototype is ready to try.

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space observatory has already identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates and tomorrow NASA will announce a new discovery by it.

Arctic sea ice is melting at its fastest pace in almost 40 years. The Northwest Passage was again ice-free this summer and the polar region could be unfrozen in just 30 years.

Along with the likes of Daimler, Honda and Toyota, all of whom firmly believe hydrogen is the fuel of the future, Hyundai is hyping hydrogen, cruising cross-country in a fuel-cell Tucson.

Start-up Badgeville is launching a new product called Social Fabric that aims to go beyond gamification to give companies more ability to drive user behavior.

More than other devices, the tablet can know enough about you to understand the context around your queries and give you better answers when you search.

Great Big Ideas, the first Floating University course, features twelve of the most important thinkers and practitioners in their fields. These lecturers are constantly making news, and in this blog, […]

The big issue for reporters, editors, and publishers isn’t automated text generation. It’s the explosion of free human-authored content on the Web.

Great for consumers, bad for authors? As Amazon prepares to launch its long-rumored Android-powered tablet, it is also reportedly thinking about an e-book rental service.

Digital fitness–the ability to adapt to changes in the digital environment—is lacking in the PR sector though it was an early adopter of social media. Time to rethink traditional PR tactics.

Thanks to huge loans from the Chinese Government, solar manufacturing has shifted from being led by a geographically disperse group to one dominated by Chinese companies.

The financial crisis and its excesses have spurned alternative banking initiatives. One of them is ethical banking, which stands for total transparency and invests only in the real economy.

The rest of the euro zone is losing patience with Greece. Germany is even working on scenarios exploring what would happen if Greece left the euro zone.

In what some see as the opposite of globalization, many Gulf countries have been investing in foreign farmland, mainly in fertile Africa, to serve as their bread basket.

U.S. Government attempts to drive up the price of medicine in developing countries, as described in leaked cables, amounts to state-sponsored violence, writes James Love.

The contrast in China between today’s consensus-driven leaders and Zhu Rongj, 83, and still seen as an aggressive reformer with no tolerance for corruption, incompetence or red tape.

What made Zipcar, the on-demand, in-your-neighborhood, Internet-based car-rental service a magnetic product that inspires accolades from customers?

What role does pleasing others play in your organization or life? The fewer people you try to please the more focused, creative, distinct you become and the more you’ll be ‘unpleasing’.

Looking to explain a new leadership model he saw gaining traction, organizational behavior expert Paul Lawrence found inspiration and answers in Darwin’s The Descent of Man.

What this NYC Fire chief learned from his experience at the World Trade Center on 9/11, how it has affected his command style and the importance of the five Cs.