Ideas Factory

I've written about the problem with user stories before. At the time, I found it better to just have the team talk over proposed changes to the product. This worked great when the team had gelled and the product is very mature; however, now I'm working with a new team and building a product from scratch.

Some questions you ask because you want the right answer. Others are valuable because no answer is right; the payoff comes from the range of attempts. Seven years ago, The Atlantic surveyed a group of eminent historians to create a ranked list of the 100 people who had done the most to shape the character of modern America.

For example, if an executive is launching a new product, the board needs to talk about the level of investment required, the size of the market, strategic plan, channels of distribution, whether there is management capability and infrastructure to execute the plan, likely competitive response, projected sales volumes and return on investment.

Necessity isn't the only mother of invention. Though it wasn't always easy to get patents or the credit they deserved, women are responsible for many items we use today.

Today everyone is getting their news and information from Twitter. At Business Insider, it's how we get a lot of our story ideas.But figuring out exactly who to follow is a tough task. So we've put together a guide of some of the most influential thought leaders in the world who tweet.

1. Buildings with phone numbers Yes, you really did have to call a building to ask whether the person you wanted to speak to was there or not. Buildings had phone numbers, not people. Now, almost everyone has a mobile phone and the concept of trying to guess where someone might be before you call them is almost entirely redundant.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Micro engagements in society actually have enormous impacts on us all. The little things add up. So how can we use micro engagements in technology to completely change a user's experience? In thespirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Often, we inbound marketers learn from inbound marketing blogs written by inbound marketers who sell inbound marketing software or run inbound marketing agencies ... and it can get kind of stale. We're all writing and reading about the same thing, so it becomes this vortex of similar content that can be hard to sift through to find things you didn't already know.

littleBits is an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping, learning and fun.

Scientists' obsession with one particular man - and with the tiny scraps of evidence left in the wake of his death - gives us a surprisingly intimate peek into the life of someone who should've been lost to the ages.

Posted on // Editor's Note: This is part 2 in an 8-part series on How to Live the Good Life. Interested in more? Sign up for our Try New Things email list. We're going to help you walk the talk! Asking for what you want is something we all do far too rarely.

Some questions you ask because you want the right answer. Others are valuable because no answer is right; the payoff comes from the range of attempts. Seven years ago, The Atlantic surveyed a group of eminent historians to create a ranked list of the 100 people who had done the most to shape the character of modern America.

"The deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than himself." Soren Kierkegaard After my last post on How to Know if You're Working (and Living) with Purpose, I had the opportunity to hear from a handful of readers about their fear that the path they've chosen isn't the right one.

In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois, along with collaborators Thomas J. Calloway and Daniel Murray, planned and mounted an exhibition on the state of black American life for that year's Paris Exposition. The exhibition consisted of charts, books, maps, and photographs (here's a photograph of the exhibit as it would have...

Get ready to have your mind blown. I was seriously shocked at some of these mistakes in thinking that I subconsciously make all the time. Obviously, none of them are huge, life-threatening mistakes, but they are really surprising and avoiding them could help us make more rational, sensible decisions.

We should warn our readers that some of these pictures may upset them, while others may fill them with joy. But that's precisely because these images reflect some of the best and worst parts of the human experience and world events - our suffering and our triumphs, our perseverance and our failures, our compassion and our hatred, our intelligence and our stupidity.

To celebrate the fall season, we've got a beautiful collection of photos that highlight the last explosion of beautiful color before the coming winter. Whether you're sitting at your computer with warm socks and some coffee or sitting outside with your laptop enjoying the weather, these images will help give you a double dose of this beautiful season.

Read to lead, right? There are few better "hacks" in life than reading-distilled knowledge that often took years to assemble can be consumed in just a few hours. The problem is that many business books are just plain awful; bloated to meet book length quotas, overly self-promotional, or a regurgitation of common sense, most serve little purpose.