It’s easy to become convinced that every new moment of crisis is unique, distracting us while we invent new solutions or get crushed by indecisiveness, but there are common threads tying moments of crisis together.
Sometimes we see a crisis coming from a mile away: A hurricane in the Atlantic lumbering towards land. A headline hinting at political upheaval. Conflict simmering steadily in the background.
Sometimes it’s a bolt from the blue: The stock market bottoms out. An attack from a hostile, violent adversary comes out of nowhere. A sudden unexpected jolt wakes us up from autopilot.
Regardless of how much warning we receive, moments of crisis demand our attention: forcing us to drop what we’re doing and take near-instantaneous action against a complex suite of circumstances, many of which are abstract, interconnected, and constantly evolving. …
Why a new wave of fast casual restaurants has blown up and what you can learn, regardless of your category
The proliferation of once niche diets like paleo and keto to a home cooking renaissance fueled by meal kit providers like Blue Apron and HelloFresh have all helped change the way Americans eat, for better or worse.
While this spells trouble for traditional restaurants and sit-down dining chains like Applebee’s and Olive Garden, one category is poised for more growth than any other: fast casuals.
As a whole, growth across the category is down, but fast casuals (a step up from traditional quick-service fast food, but not quite a full service restaurant) are expected to grow faster in 2019 than previous years and outpace other segments of the category. …
Two competing business models seek to redefine the innovative company.
In 2007, the mere rumor of what would later be known as Hulu sent the media into a frenzy. Those headlines, however, weren’t singing the praises of a revolutionary new video service, but were laughing at NBC and NewsCorp’s seemingly off-the-cuff response to Google’s recent acquisition of YouTube in 2006 (fun fact: Hulu’s early critics fell in love with Netflix’s online streaming announcement just two months earlier). In less than a year, Hulu rose to being a leader and key player in the streaming video category, the television industry, and the digital ecosystem as a whole.
Reduced to its simplest form, Hulu streams videos. The site streams video from content providers like NBC, FOX, and ABC (although not an original partner, ABC now owns 1/3 of the company) and produces its own original programming. Hulu has a total of 488 content partners that provide 68,000 hours of video to users. Originally, the site acted as an aggregate and viewing area for shows, as well as a search engine that directed users to network sites where they could stream their shows. Today, the site only shows content that providers have made available. Hulu offers a paid subscription for $8/month to the site that provides users with additional features, aptly named Hulu Plus. Hulu Plus users receive more content and increased access to that content. With a subscription, users are able to watch all the episodes of a show’s current and past seasons. The standard version of the site usually only has the five most recent episodes of a show available to watch. Hulu Plus also allows users to stream content in more ways than on a computer, which is all that’s offered with the free version. Hulu Plus is available on many devices ranging from phones to gaming systems to televisions. …
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