Google and Facebook still use the 3-word question that saved a $225 billion company in the 1970s

• Shana Lebowitz
 

• 12h
• 48,890

Anyone can ask them.AP

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Min Basadur was working as a creative manager at Procter & Gamble in the mid-1970s when he got a call from a team in product development.

"We need some help," Basadur remembers the team leader telling him. "We feel like a bunch of failures."

For six months, the team had been struggling to come up with a product that could beat Irish Spring, a new and popular soap bar from Colgate. As Colgate's market share increased, Procter & Gamble knew it was only a matter of time before its market share dwindled.

One day later, the team would have a creative breakthrough, thanks largely to Basadur and his use of three words: How might we?

Here was the issue: Irish Spring featured green and white stripes; a television advertisementshowed a man showering with the soap bar in a meadow and feeling refreshed. The Procter & Gamble team couldn't seem to come up with a soap bar that beat Irish Spring in a blind test of consumers.

Basadur arranged to hold a daylong session with the team. He started with the problem it had been working on for six months: creating a better green-striped soap bar.

The key question, as the team saw it, was how to make a better green-striped bar. Then Basadur asked another question: "Why might we want to make a better green-striped bar?" The answer was that they'd lost market share.

"Why else might we want to create a green-striped bar?" Basadur asked the team. He encouraged his colleagues to think from the consumer's perspective.

One person came up with an answer: "We'd like to make people feel more refreshed."

"That was the aha moment," Basadur told Business Insider. "We had redefined the problem — and that was the secret to the process."

Now the problem was: "How might we make a more refreshing bar?"

That afternoon the team came up with about 200 possible answers to the question, and it settled on the idea of creating a bar that reminded people of the beach or the seacoast.

Soon Procter & Gamble debuted its soap bar, "Coast," featuring swirly blue stripes. It beat Irish Spring in the blind test.

You can still find Coast and Irish Spring on the market today — along with many similar products from competitors. Procter & Gamble currently has a market value of $225 billion. (You can read the full "Irish Spring story" on Basadur's website.)

This process — specifically the "how might we" question format — has since spread to companies including Ideo, Facebook, and Google, according to Harvard Business Review. Basadur, who is now a business consultant, has been teaching the process at organizations for 40 years.

As Ideo's global head of talent, Duane Bray, told Quartz: "HMW [how might we] questions are freeing amidst uncertainty because they allow clients to mentally reset, and reframe a problem as an opportunity."

Bill Smith/Flickr

Basadur told Business Insider why his process worked: "What most people did and still do to this day is they jump from what we call a fuzzy situation immediately into solutions. They miss that internal step, which was: Get some facts about it and create challenges starting with the phrase 'How might we?'"

In other words, most of us try to fix a problem as fast as possible without stopping to think about what the problem really is.

Most important, Basadur said, when you take a step back before jumping into solutions, you're "deferring judgment."

When someone says, "I've got an idea," Basadur said, we often respond with, "That's a good idea, but …" We'd do better, he said, to respond with, "I like that idea and I'd like to build on your idea and make it even better."

Defining the problem is the third step in an eight-step process that Basadur uses in his work with organizations. The process runs all the way from problem formulation to solution implementation.

Defining the problem is somewhat similar to the second step in a process called "design thinking," developed by Stanford engineers, when you ask yourself, "Which question are you going to answer?" The idea behind both is to pause and think critically before leaping into potential fixes.

Interestingly, Basadur said it wasn't his deep knowledge of the personal-care industry that enabled him to help develop Coast.

"I didn't know anything about soap bars," he said. "But I just knew how to count" — specifically, how to count the eight steps in his process. "By leading them through that methodology, out popped the answer."

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SEE ALSO: A Stanford professor explains how 'design thinking' can help you lose weight, stop worrying, and change your life

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4 Apple contractors are accusing Qualcomm of antitrust violations

• Stephen Nellis, Reuters

• 10h
• 1,364

Steve Mollenkopf, Qualcomm CEO, speaks during his keynote address at CES in Las Vegas. Reuters/Rick Wilking

(Reuters) - iPhone chip supplier Qualcomm Inc faces a fresh set of antitrust allegations from a group of four companies that assemble the iPhone and other products on behalf of Apple Inc.

Foxconn parent Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, Wistron Corp, Compal Electronics Inc and Pegatron Corp alleged that Qualcomm violated two sections of the Sherman Act, a U.S. antitrust law.

The accusations, made in a filing late Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, are counterclaims to a Qualcomm lawsuit filed in May seeking to force the contractors to pay Qualcomm license fees that Apple directed them to stop paying.

"Qualcomm has confirmed publicly that this lawsuit against our clients is intended to make a point about Apple and punish our clients for working with Apple," Theodore J. Boutrous, a lawyer for the four companies, said in a statement. "The companies are bringing their own claims and defenses against Qualcomm."

The allegations are part of broader dispute between Apple and Qualcomm, which supplies so-called modem chip technology that lets iPhones connect to cellular data networks, over the nature of Qualcomm's business model of linking the sale of chips and patent licenses, which has come under scrutiny by regulators in South Korea, the United States and several other countries.

In January, Apple sued Qualcomm alleging that the company had withheld nearly $1 billion of patent license rebates it owed Apple in retaliation for Apple's cooperation with South Korean regulators. Apple told its contract manufacturers to withhold license payments from Qualcomm while the dispute played out, which prompted Qualcomm to sue them in May.

"Despite Apple's claims against Qualcomm, Apple suppliers remain contractually obligated to pay royalties to Qualcomm under their license agreements with us, including for sales of iPhones to Apple," Qualcomm President Derek Aberle said of the dispute on the company's conference call in April.

Much of the language in the contractors' allegations mirror Apple's objections to Qualcomm's business model. A senior Apple official confirmed that the company is helping to fund the contractors' legal defense as part of an indemnification agreement among the firms. Apple has also formally joined the contractor case as a defendant.

The lost license revenue from Apple has been a hit to Qualcomm's sales. Analysts expect $5.2 billion in revenue for the June quarter, down from $6 billion a year earlier.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2017. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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Tesla just added the CEO of Fox News' parent company to its board

• Graham Rapier
 

• 18h
• 2,113

Christian Science Monitor

James Murdoch, the CEO of 21st Century Fox and son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has joined Tesla's board, the company announced in a blog post Monday.

The company also said that Linda Johnson Rice, chairman and chief executive officer of Johnson Publishing Company, will join the board. 

At 21st Century Fox, James Murdoch ran the company's environmental sustainability initiative. He and his wife, Kathryn, are the founders of a non-profit foundation called Quadrivium, which claims to "support practical, measurable solutions at the intersection of society’s challenges."

Murdoch is the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who founded News Corp. 21st Century Fox split from News Corp in 2014. Many Rupert Murdoch-owned publications  — and even the man himself — have repeatedly expressed skepticism about man-made climate change. 

In a 2015 tweet, he said he was a "climate change skeptic not a denier."

Fox Networks Group is the primary operating unit of 21st Century Fox. 21st Century Fox is also a joint venture partner in The National Geographic Channels with the National Geographic Society.

Investors criticized Tesla in April for having too many board members with ties to CEO Elon Musk, and that a “critical check on possible dysfunctional group dynamics” was needed. 

Musk responded on Twitter, saying an announcement was coming soon. Three months later, the announcement was finally made: Murdoch and Johnson, who is also CEO of Ebony Media, will be joining the board.

Besides, I already said we'd add more independent members during SCTY merger. Will announce soon, but this group has nothing to do with it.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 12, 2017

The shakeup comes in a critical quarter for the electric car maker. Its new Model 3 — Tesla’s first mass-market electric car — is scheduled for delivery at the end of July. Tesla was briefly the largest US automaker in terms of market capitalization, ahead of General Motors, before being dethroned earlier this month.

Tesla shares slid 2.5% during Monday’s trading session, and continued to sink slightly after the bell. 

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Plutocracy III: Class War (Video)

Plutocracy III: Class War

The early struggles of the working class are placed under a microscope in Plutocracy III: Class War, the latest chapter in an exceptionally well produced series which explores the origins of America's growing economic divide.

Without a doubt, the clashes between worker rights and corporate interests are prominent in today's political and economic landscape, but they're not a modern phenomenon by any means. These imbalances, and the wealth inequalities that have resulted in their wake, have existed for generations. The filmmakers provide a searing portrait of the brave workers who fought for true democracy in the early decades of the 20th century.

The film begins with the titan of the labor movement during that period - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones. A galvanizing presence who spent her life inspiring a working class revolution, Jones rallied a coalition of miners from Ludlow, Colorado in 1914. These miners worked under heinous conditions and for little pay in a coal operation owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Their determination knew no bounds; when the company cast the striking miners and their families out of their homes, they defiantly set up a colony of tents and continued their fight for fairness.

Their stand-off ended in tragedy. The National Guard was deployed and unleashed gun fire into the colony, senselessly massacring men, women and children. This appalling event sparked outrage and public protest across the United States.

The bulk of the film examines the impact of World War I on the labor movement, a conflict that saw the slaughter and disfigurement of a generation. The war provided further evidence of the class divide, and would propel labor advocacy efforts among all genders and races.

All of this culminated in the rise of the Socialist Party and the radical International Workers of the World organization, as well as the events of 1919, a year that saw 22.5% of the work force in strike mode.

Plutocracy III: Class War offers invaluable historical insights from a panel of historians and labor advocates. Their deeply human narrative is assisted by a briskly edited barrage of stock footage, archive materials, and other provocative imagery.

Directed by: Scott Noble

Astronomers have detected 'strange signals' coming from a star 11 light-years away

• Dave Mosher
 
•    

• 2h
• 51,180

The Arecibo Radio Telescope began collecting data for SETI in 1999.Uploaded to Wikipedia by File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske)

Astronomers say they've detected "strange signals" coming from the direction of a small, dim star located about 11 light-years from Earth.

Researchers picked up the mysterious signals on May 12 using the Arecibo Observatory, a huge radio telescope built inside of a Puerto Rican sinkhole.

The radio signals appear to be coming from Ross 128, a red dwarf star that's not yet known to have any planets and is about 2,800 times dimmer than the sun. Abel Méndez, an astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, said the star was observed for 10 minutes, during which time the signal was picked up and observed to be "almost periodic".

Méndez said it's extremely unlikely that intelligent extraterrestrial life is responsible, but noted that the possibility can't yet be ruled out.

"The SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] groups are aware of the signals," Méndez wrote in an email to Business Insider.

Explanations for the 'very peculiar' signals

While Arecibo is known for its role in efforts to search for signals from aliens, it's also great for looking at distant galaxies and pinging near-Earth asteroids.

Méndez thinks the signal is more likely from something humans put in space, perhaps a satellite that passed thousands of miles overhead.

"The field of view of [Arecibo] is wide enough, so there is the possibility that the signals were caused not by the star but another object in the line of sight," Méndez said, adding that "some communication satellites transmit in the frequencies we observed." 

However, in a July 12 blog post about the mystery of Ross 128, he wrote that "we have never seen satellites emit bursts like that" and called the signals "very peculiar".

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger

Another possible explanation is a stellar flare, or outburst of energy from the star's surface. Such bursts from the sun travel at light-speed, emit powerful radio signals, and can disrupt satellites and communications on Earth, as well as endanger astronauts.

Solar flares can also be chased by a slower-moving yet more energetic coronal mass ejections: a flood of solar particles that can distort our planet's magnetic field, generate geomagnetic storms, and cripple power grids and fry electronics.

Taking another look at Ross 128

To see if the signals are still there, Méndez said Arecibo is going to stare down Ross 128 and its surroundings many more times, starting July 16.

"Success will be to find the signal again" at the star's location but not in surrounding directions, he said. "If we don't get the signal again then the mystery deepens."

An aerial view of FAST in southwest China. Liu Xu / Xinhua via AP

Méndez wrote in his blog post that other radio telescopes might not be sensitive enough to pick up the signals, noting one exception: China's monstrous Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST.

But FAST isn't operational right now, since it's being calibrated, and Méndez said he doesn't know when it will be back online.

Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, confirmed that the group is "well aware of the signals" and might use its powerful Allen Telescope Array in California "to check them out."

"The chances are high that they're terrestrial interference, in fact. That's really always been the case," Shostak told Business Insider in an email.

Right now there's really only one compelling signal from outer space that might come from aliens: "[T]he WOW signal," Shostak said. "That one is still quite odd."

SEE ALSO: Dim red stars that are nothing like the sun may be our best hope of finding aliens

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John McCain's recovery could take longer than we think

• Mark Abadi
 

• 15h
• 16,868
 

John McCain. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

John McCain's recovery could take longer than initially expected, medical experts told The New York Times on Sunday, two days after the Arizona senator underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye.

McCain's office suggested in a statement last week that the senator would be out for a week recovering in Arizona. But two neurosurgeons told The Times that the typical recovery time for such a procedure was "a few weeks" or more.

That's bad news for Senate Republicans, who are delaying a vote on their healthcare bill until McCain returns to Washington. Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have already said they will not vote to proceed on the measure, meaning that Republicans need McCain to have a chance at reaching the necessary 50-vote threshold.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had hoped to hold a procedural vote on the bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, next week.

"While John is recovering, the Senate will continue our work on legislative items and nominations, and will defer consideration of the Better Care Act," McConnell said in a statement on Saturday.

McCain's office has not disclosed any further information about the surgery since it was announced, and surgeons at the hospital are not granting interviews, leading to speculation over how doctors discovered the blood clot. According to one of the neurosurgeons interviewed by The Times, the type of blood clot McCain had is usually discovered when the patient has symptoms and not as the result of a routine physical as McCain's office said.

SEE ALSO: 'Another shoe just dropped': John McCain says more bombshells on Trump and Russia are coming

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Ethereum's share of the cryptocurrency market has exploded

• Frank Chaparro
 

• 18h
• 10,961

Autonomous

Ethereum is gobbling up share in the cryptocurrency market. 

A new report by Autonomous NEXT, a financial technology analytics service, shows that Ethereum's percentage of the total cryptocurrency market has sharply risen since the beginning of the year.

In January it stood at approximately 5%. As of June 22, its marketcap as a percentage of the entire market rose to 30%.

Ethereum's impressive rise has led to a dramatic fall in bitcoin's marketcap as a percentage of the market. It has declined from about 85% at the beginning of the year to just under 40% as of late June.  Up until mid June, Ethereum was on track to surpass bitcoin as the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to Coindesk, but its share of the market has since pulled back. 

Still, the shift from bitcoin to Ethereum reflects a change in what the cryptocurrency industry wants from blockchain tech, according to the report.

"Early phase of cryptocurrency market development focused on who will be the “digital gold” – and Bitcoin won through the largest developer and adoption ecosystem," the report said. "However, current battle is for other functionalities, such as global decentralized computing or smart contracts infrastructure."

Ethereum, unlike bitcoin, wasn't built to simply function as a "digital gold." According to Paul McNeal, a bitcoin evangelist, the Ethereum blockchain was built as a platform on which two parties could enter into a so-called smart contract without a third party. As a result, it can be used as a currency and it can "represent virtual shares, assets, proof of membership, and more." 

The multifaceted functionality of Ethereum has many folks in financial services bullish on its future. Mike McGovern, the new head of Investor Services Fintech Offerings at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, is one such person. 

"Ethereum is not only cheaper than bitcoin, it is also more robust and has more applications outside of simply financial transactions," he said in a recent interview with Business Insider. 

A  survey recently cited by Nathaniel Popper in The New York Times indicates that a lot of businesses are singing a similar tune. Almost 94% of surveyed firms said they feel positive about the state of ether tokens. Only 49% of firms surveyed had a positive feeling about bitcoin. 

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.

SEE ALSO: BITCOIN MINER: The rise of Ethereum could help some bitcoin miners