Spy Novel or Start-Up?

War of the Cars This is Uber's Playbook for Sabotaging LyftThe Verge

Fans of burner phones, secret credit cards, code names, and general espionage, look no further than your friendly neighborhood car-sharing start-up. According to The Verge, Uber (the company where you sit in the back seat) is waging an outlandish war on Lyft (the company where you sit in the front seat and parade about town with a giant pink mustache in full view). The gist is this: Contractors, known as "brand ambassadors" (these Uber advocates aren't actually company employees, but that’s a whole other matter), allegedly use their burners to summon Lyft rides. Relying on a playbook (a version of which The Verge published), they then, according to The Verge, try to lure drivers to Uber. A contractor can supposedly earn $750 for turning a driver. The program, in all of its glory, is known as SLOG.



Why would a company use such drastic tactics? Good question. In a blog post, Uber says, "We never use marketing tactics that prevent a driver from making their living — and that includes never intentionally canceling rides." The Verge's Casey Newton, who broke the story, suggests it comes down to which company consumers think of when they need a ride: Uber or Lyft. And perhaps it's just an escalation of existing competition: both Uber and Lyft offer bonuses to drivers who switch companies. But burner phones? How The Wire of you, Uber.

The Past Doesn't Seem So Far Away Women at Work Ramparts

Usually we only recommend shiny new stories here. But this Studs Terkel interview collection, originally published in 1974 and recently reprinted by the web site Longform (disclosure: I'm an editor there), is really worth looking back on because the issues women discuss are so incredibly relevant today. Terkel interviews four women — a domestic worker, a 24-year-old receptionist, a factory worker, and a poverty worker — who eloquently describe how they feel about their jobs. They worry about what we now call "work-life balance" — caring for their kids while working long hours, often at the whims of others — the fact that college didn't prepare them for work, the constant interruptions, the endless meetings, the division between management and labor, and, most of all, the desire to do meaningful work. "I don't know what I'd like to do, and that's what hurts the most," says Sharon Atkins, the receptionist, who cries every morning before going to her job. Lilith Reynolds, the poverty worker, adds: "People are intimidated and the system works to emphasize that. They get what they want out of people by threatening them economically. It makes people apple polishers and ass kissers."



"I used to hear people say, 'Work needs to be redefined.' I thought they were crazy. Now I know they're not."

All Sorts of Unfortunate Things What Happened to MotorolaChicago Magazine

Motorola, the telecom giant that introduced the world to Six Sigma, has had a rough decade. Its smart phones make up a mere 2% of the global market. It spun off its mobile phone division, largely at the hands of activist investor Carl Icahn. That division was sold to Google, which later sold it to Lenovo. Journalist Ted C. Fishman traces exactly how all of this happened, and chronicles some of the company's missteps as it went from industry leader to a company just trying to catch up.



Among them: a toxic culture that emerged as the public-safety division plugged along while the emergent handset group reveled in bonuses (my favorite anecdote here involves male models singing "We're in the Money" while painted green and wearing dollar signs); no real urgency in moving from analog to digital; creating dozens of different phones that needed to be adapted to each carrier; partnering with Apple for the Rokr phone (arguably, the experience taught Apple how to make phones, but did little for Motorola); and being late to the smart-phone game even though Motorola held patents for technologies specifically for smartphone functionality.

No Fighting, KidsDon’t Want Me to Recline My Airline Seat? You Can Pay MeThe Upshot

It was the "water-in-the-face" moment heard 'round the internet: Two United Airlines passengers were kicked off a plane over the weekend after one of them installed the Knee Defender, a device that prevents the person in front of you from reclining the seat. After a flight attendant asked him to remove it, an argument ensued that ended with the passenger affected by said Defender dousing the other with (what I hope was) a free beverage. Josh Barro, a writer for The Upshot and frequent flyer, argues that the Coase Theorem, an economic theory, could help figure out who's right here. Essentially, it states "that it doesn’t matter very much who is initially given a property right; so long as you clearly define it and transaction costs are low, people will trade the right so that it ends up in the hands of whoever values it most." In this case, the person who values the space most (Knee Defender guy) would pay the person who has the property right (water-throwing lady) to place her seat in an upright position.

Think BiggerThe Lovers, the Haters, and How They Helped Drive Innovation at Kraft Knowledge@Wharton

Sometimes a breakthrough innovation is staring you right in the face, disguised as an incremental product extension. Kraft Foods had been selling Crystal Light, a line of artificially sweetened water flavorings, in powder form for decades when it developed a liquid version. No big deal, right? At first, the company planned to market the stuff as just a new form of an existing offering. But the company was making a concerted effort to think big — really big — about innovations, so it tried launching the product as an entirely new category. It worked. “You walk into the store today, and there is a whole section of these liquid water enhancers,” says Kraft’s VP for breakthrough innovation, Barry Calpino. The business that was created by the product Mio is now an $800 million segment.



Kraft has continued to invest in the product and the category year after year, because the company’s philosophy is that once you’ve got hold of a good idea, you have to stick with it and put resources into it. “The number-one consistent cause of failure is not investing in a good idea beyond just the launch period,” Calpino says. —Andy O’Connell

BONUS BITSCommon (and Often Terrible) Traps

The Procrastination Doom Loop — and How to Break It (The Atlantic)
The Abrasiveness Trap: High-Achieving Men and Women are Described Differently in Reviews (Fortune)
Break the 'Competency Curse' (The Wall Street Journal)