Fast Company, Senior Editor

As Senior Editor, I guided many features. Most notably I came up with The Most Creative People In Business. The vision included a conference business built on top of an annual editorial issue. It quickly became the magazine's most profitable franchise.

I also wrote cover stories and edited feature packages including the National Magazine Award and a Webby nominated Influence Project.

Letter From the Editor: Think Randomly, Execute Strategically

Curious story behind the picture that accompanies this Fast Company Editor's Letter about me. Pharrell Williams is holding my now nine-year old daughter Clementine. We randomly met at LAX. Shortly after, I strategically included him in The Most Creative People In Business package that I produced for the magazine.

Most Creative People 2009

"Taken in its entirety, it’s a snapshot of the range and depth of creativity across our business landscape — a remarkable and perhaps surprising source of strength in these times of turmoil. We believe firmly that recognizing the difficult yet invigorating genesis of new ideas can have a contagious effect on business practices." 

Welcome to The Influence Project

The Influence Project aimed to remove some of the mystery behind the inherent passivity of social network numbers. This experiment shows what happens when an individual takes an audience at rest and applies an unbalanced force that moves it into action.

Popularity, Ego, and Influence – What Is the Influence Project?

We didn’t give guidance on how people should pursue their influence goals. Some may engage in deception to get others to click on their link, some may use tactics that feel like spam to boost results. Some may use charity as a lever to push engagement. Is that inappropriate? Is that unfair? Is that a popularity contest? Maybe. But it is reflective of behavior that happens everyday on the Internet.

Fast Company honored with National Magazine Award

Fast Company received two nominations from the National Magazine Awards for Digital Media, the magazine industry’s highest honor: “The Influence Project,” a November 2010 story with a comprehensive online companion, in the Multimedia Package category, and Co.Design. Co.Design won the Ellie for the Online Department category.

Shaun White’s Business Is Red Hot

Shaun White took a pass on becoming the Crown Fool of Gnarnia. Successful before his Olympics win, he knew his brand value and dared ask marketers, "Do I really want to do that? Do I want to be known for airing over some dude going aaaahhh! with my teeth gleaming?" 

Nokia Rocks the World: The Phone King’s Plan to Redefine Its Business

Nokia’s 43-year-old executive vice president of entertainment and communities, Tero Ojanperä, and Eurythmics founder and Nokia consultant, Dave Stewart make for an odd pairing. Stewart with his quintessential British rock-‘n’-roll-ness. Ojanperä with his Finnish-savant electrical-engineer-ness. Together they guide us through the early battles of the smartphone wars.

The Mekanism Guarantee: They Engineer Virality

Mekanism built a reputation as marketing’s twisted troubadours, with a particular talent for attracting the wandering eye of the fickle youth market. “Part of the misconception of Mekanism is that we’re just king of the dick jokes. And we are the king of the dick jokes — it’s good to be king — but something much deeper is happening.”

All Systems Go

With back orders of more than $5 billion for jet engines to the Chinese government, GE targets the $2 trillion in infrastructure projects--power grid, water, and rail--its aviation experts discover in a countrywide airport plan. 

The Masters of Typography: House Industries

Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight. As typeface designers, they translate culture into letters and use type to define brands like Build-A-Bear, Royal Dutch Shell, McDonald’s, Nike, Taco Bell, Toys “R” Us, ESPN, The New Yorker, H&M and MTV.

Freelance Writing

As a writer, I’ve explored eclectic topics like private wave ownership in Fiji, the rise of medical and legalized marijuana, the idiosyncratic allure of Fender’s Jazzmaster guitar, the economics of height and the demons and genius driving designer Marc Jacobs. 

Shortchanged

More than a hundred years ago, social scientists established the correlation between height and socioeconomic status, and they’ve been trying to solve the enigma of the “height premium” ever since. A Princeton study presents an explanation that pisses of short people.

Who Owns This Wave?

When the surf was good, the hardships became part of the adventure. But when the sea went flat, the romance waned. Living in feral conditions on the beach of Tavarua, Dave Clark couldn't have known that within 20 years he would forever change surfers' relationship with the ocean and become one of the most admired--and reviled--figures in his sport's history.

Guitar Hero

Over the run of 50 years, the Fender Jazzmaster guitar has developed a following as musically diverse as surf (the Ventures), new wave (the Cars), indie (Yo La Tengo), electronic (Stereolab) and alternative (My Bloody Valentine). And yet it never captured its intended audience.

Managing Marc Jacobs

In February 2007, Robert Duffy sensed something was wrong with his longtime business partner, the fashion designer Marc Jacobs. "Something was going on in his personal life, but I wasn't 100% sure he was back on drugs," says Duffy, who hoped his intuition was off.

High Times

The feds say medical marijuana is illegal. State authorities disagree. A tour through the capital of quasi-legal pot, where the buds are stony and confusion is king.

Fortune, Reporter

Surf's Up

I ask pro surfer and six-time world champ Kelly Slater and Yahoo's first "web surfer" to share insights on their similarly named jobs. Answers reveal the two have little in common besides a title.

X-Treme Profits

Pro skateboarder Tony Hawk is standing aboard a corporate jet on his way to a charity event in Houston. In his hand is a Heineken and on the table in front of him is a platter overflowing with lobster, stone crab, and jumbo shrimp. Doing his best David Byrne imitation, he stiffens his frame, taps his arm, and says, "And you may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?"

America's Forty Richest Under Forty

In this report on the Cyberfest Destiny of the first dotcom era, we explore the ethereal power of paper money in the first-ever ranking of the wired generation's wealthiest.

Business Is Good, but Beer Is Better: The Other B-school

Future suits and industry titans see Harvard and Wharton as the choice for an MBA. A select few take a different path to the other b-school, the rarified Master Brewing program at UC Davis.

Ghost Writer

Go Put Your Strengths to Work:
6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

Together with management guru Marcus Buckingham, I co-wrote The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.