 |
|
|
|||||
A child-size table and small chairs make up the centerpiece of a playroom. It’s where children do crafts, host tea parties for their dolls, play hide-and-seek, and build forts. So it makes sense that people buy a lot of them: By 2030, Americans will spend an estimated $12 billion on play tables. [Photo: Bauen] The market is flooded with sets, ranging from inexpensive ones like Ikeas $50 version to more design-forward varieties like Lalos $300 set. Still, husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Lynn and Cassidy Rouse believe theres room in the market for a better-designed version. More specifically, they wanted to create a set that was indestructible, easy to assemble, usable indoors and outdoors, and even portable. And they wanted to create chairs that were almost impossible to tip over. The Rouseswho have two young childrenspent two years designing a play table and chairs, exploring hundreds of prototypes and materials, until they arrived at their final design: a whimsical-looking set made from recyclable plastic. The product has already won an iF Design Award. This week, theyre launching a $649 play table and chair set through their new brand, Bauen. Over time, they expect to redesign other children’s furniture. A Packed Market Child-size furniture has been around since the 18th century, when well-to-do families wanted to give their children opportunities to play and develop. Today such items are a staple of childhood. But when the Rouses scoured the market for a play table for their kids, they found most options lacking. Thanks to the rise of cheap, mass-produced furniture, you can find many affordable options from Target, Walmart, and Amazon. The problem is that most of them are made of inexpensive materials that break easily. When we spoke to experienced parents, they said that they had gone through several sets of play tables, Cassidy says. It’s become a norm to get an inexpensive play set and expect to throw it out after a few years. If you have a second child, you just buy a whole new set. [Image: Bauen] Outdoor play sets are slightly more durable, since they are made using heavy-duty plastic, but they’re often designed like picnic tables, and don’t look good indoors. So you end up buying two setsone for indoors, and another for outdoors, he says. Today, thanks to improved child-safety laws, companies need to follow regulations when designing furniture for kids. After receiving reports of injuries, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission established a rule that chairs marketed for children younger than 5 must go through a stability test issued by a third-party testing agency. The test involves putting the chair at an incline to show that it will not easily tip over if the child sits too far back or leans to one side. But in focus groups, the Rouses heard parents say their kids frequently tipped over in play chairs, partly because often they often sit quietly at the table, instead playing vigorously and leaning backward at an unsafe angle. We didn’t think the standard accommodated the way children actually interact with this furniture, Lynn says. [Image: Bauen] Redesigning a Classic So they set out to create a better product, starting by designing a chair that is more tip-resistant than others on the market. When you first see the chairs, their proportions look a little comical. They have a very wide seat, a very short 8-inch back, and thick legs (a now patent-pending design). All of this creates a low center of gravity, which makes them harder to tip over. Most children’s chairs are designed like smaller versions of adult chairs, Cassidy says. But we had a breakthrough when we realized that toddlers don’t need a large, supportive back; their bodies are often leaning forward to see what is in front of them. By creating a wide seat and a low back, the chair is much more stable. [Image: Bauen] Rethinking the chairs led the Rouses to rethink almost every aspect of the set’s design. They wondered whether it was possible to create furniture that would look good indoors but also be practical outdoors. They ended up using polyethylene, a type of durable plastic thats often used to construct outdoor furniture. They sourced it from a company whose products are deemed toxin-free by the EU, which has higher product safety standards than the U.S. [Image: Bauen] Despite being plastic, the set doesn’t look like a traditional picnic table and chairs meant for the backyard. The furniture has interesting curves. Depending on how it’s styled, it can look fun and cartoony in a kid’s bedroom, or sleek in a modern home. But when the sun comes out, you can easily carry the set out to a deck or garden, so kids can eat and play outside. After trying out many other products on the market, the Rouses discovered things they disliked and avoided them in their own design. For instance, they didn’t like the way liquid would spill right off tables, so they designed raised edges so spills would stay contained. Lynn found it annoying that many chairs were not large enough for adults to sit on. We wanted it to fit an adult bottom, she says. That way you can sit with your child at the table. But you can also bring it to the bathroom and sit on it while giving your kid a bath. [Image: Bauen] Finally, they wanted to make the set easy to assemble. The chairs don’t require any assembly. For the table, you only have to attach the legs. It doesn’t require any tools, and it takes less than two minutes. Importantly, the table is designed to be disassembled easily so you can store it and transport it. You might want to bring it on holiday with you, Lynn says. The Bauen set is certainly thoughtfully designed, but its also much more expensive than other kids furniture on the market. At $649, it is more than double the cost of the Lalo set, which is already considered expensive. The table will likely be appealing to affluent, design-conscious parents. But the Rouses are also trying to make the case that their product is much more durable than others on the market, so its a good value for money.
Category:
E-Commerce
We live in an era of rapid technological change, where the rise of AI presents both opportunities and risks. While AI can drive efficiency and innovation, it also increases the temptation for leaders to prioritize short-term gainsautomating decisions for immediate profit, optimizing for productivity at the cost of employee well-being, and sidelining long-term sustainability. Organizations that focus solely on AI-driven efficiency risk creating burnt out workforces, extractive systems, and fragile organizations that cannot withstand economic, social, or environmental disruptions. To build resilient organizations that can weather the future, leaders must embrace regenerative leadership. This requires shifting from exploitative business models that prioritize efficiency to people-centered leadership that actively seeks to restore and enhance resources, whether human, environmental, or technological. Regenerative leaders recognize that AI should augment human potential, not replace or exploit it. They create strategies that use AI to enhance long-term human, business, and environmental well-being rather than diminishing them. The key principles of regenerative leadership A regenerative leader creates sustainable systems. Unlike traditional leadership, which focuses on efficiency, profit, and centralized control, regenerative leadership nurtures ecosystems. Here are the key principles a regenerative leader follows: Systems Thinking: Sees organizations and ecosystems as interconnected, ensuring decisions benefit the whole rather than just isolated parts. Living Systems Approach: Draws inspiration from natures regenerative cycles to create adaptive, self-renewing teams and businesses. A self-renewing team is one that continuously learns and evolves. Purpose-Driven Leadership: Aligns business and leadership goals with meaningful long-term impact. Human Well-being: Prioritizes employee and stakeholder well-being including creating psychological safety and a collaborative environment. Resilience & Adaptability: Leads with agility in uncertain times, designing organizations that can thrive in change. Regenerative Value Creation: Moves beyond extraction of resources, talent, and energy to creating lasting value for people, communities, and nature. Collaborative & Decentralized Power: Encourages participatory leadership, where teams self-organize and contribute to a larger mission. Regenerative leadership in action Heres how different companies have implemented regenerative leadership: Business Strategy: Companies like Patagonia and Interface have pioneered sustainable business practices that go beyond carbon neutrality and actively regenerate ecosystems. Both companies saw improved brand loyalty, cost savings, and competitive advantage from these efforts. Patagonias ethical stance boosted sales, making it one of the most trusted brands globally, while Interfaces sustainable innovations led to higher efficiency, lower production costs, and increased demand for eco-friendly products. Corporate Culture: Microsoft prioritizes employee well-being through flexible work policies, continuous learning programs, and mental health support. This fosters a positive work environment that enhances engagement, productivity, and ultimately long-term business success. Community Impact: The Hershey Company has made significant strides in community impact through its commitment to sustainable cocoa sourcing and education programs. These programs ensure a stable supply chain, enhance brand trust, and meet consumer demand for ethical products, driving long-term success. Developing regenerative leadership skills Regenerative leadership is not an innate talent but a skillset that can be cultivated. Here are some suggestions for becoming a more regenerative leader: 1. Expand awareness to think in systems, not silos. Regenerative leaders recognize that businesses must work in harmony with both the environment and human nature. Companies like Patagonia restore ecosystems through regenerative practices. They emphasize that great leadership works with natural flows rather than imposing rigid control. By shaping organizations that evolve organically, like ecosystems, leaders cultivate resilience, innovation, and lasting success. 2. Practice deep listening to lead with empathy. Success will start with deep listening to employees, customers, and stakeholders. The Buddhist concept of mindfulness will remind leaders to be present, ask the right questions, and cultivate trust, creating cultures where innovation thrives. 3. Embrace a growth mindset to stay adaptive. Regenerative leaders will see challenges as opportunities for reinvention. The Zen principle of Shoshin (beginners mind) will encourage curiosity, adaptability, and a culture of continuous learning, ensuring organizations do not just survive but evolve. 4. Foster collaboration and build networks, not hierarchies. The best leaders will empower teams, encourage co-creation, and shift from competition to co-elevation. By fostering inclusive, participatory decision-making, they will build self-renewing, resilient organizations. 5. Measure impact beyond profits. Success is more than profitsit includes ethical usage of technology, employee well-being, biodiversity restoration, and community impact. Regenerative leaders track holistic KPIs, driving sustainable business transformation. The future of leadership is regenerative By embracing regenerative leadership, leaders will move beyond short-term survival tactics and instead drive innovation, resilience, and long-term success while creating lasting positive impacts. This approach will become an ongoing practice of learning, adaptation, and alignment with the broader ecosystems of business, society, and technology. The choice will be clear: Leadership must not only sustain but regenerateleveraging AI and emerging technologies as forces for good.
Category:
E-Commerce
Bellevue, Washington, is the home of thousands of Microsoft employees. Its AI-powered traffic monitoring system lives up to such expectations. Using existing traffic cameras capable of reading signs and lights, it tracks not just crashes but also near misses. And it suggests solutions to managers, like rethinking a turn lane or moving a stop line.But this AI technology wasnt born out of Microsoft and its big OpenAI partnership. It was developed by a startup called Archetype AI. You might think of the company as OpenAI for the physical world.[Image: Archetype AI]A city will report an accident after an accident happens. But what they want to know is, like, where are the accidents that nearly happenedbecause that they cannot report. And they want to prevent those accidents, says Ivan Poupyrev, cofounder of Archetype AI. So predicting the future is one of the biggest use cases we have right now.Poupyrev and Leonardo Giusti founded Archetype after leaving Googles ATAP (advanced technology and projects) group, where they worked on cutting-edge projects initiatives like the smart textile Project Jacquard and the gadget radar Project Soli. Poupryev details his history of working at giants like Sony and Disney, where engineers always had to develop one algorithm to understand something like a heartbeat, and another for steps. Each physical thing you wanted to measure, whatever that may be, was always its own discrete systemanother mini piece of software to code and support.Theres simply too much happening inside our natural world to measure or consider it all through this one-problem-at-a-time approach. As a result, our highest-tech hardware still understands very little of our real environment, and what is actually happening in it.What Archetype is suggesting instead is an AI that can track and react to the complexity of the physical world. Its Newton foundational model is trained on piles of open-sensor data from sources like NASAwhich publishes everything from ocean temperatures gathered with microwave scanners to infrared scans of cloud patterns. And much like an LLM can infer linguistic reasoning by studying texts, Newton can infer physics by studying sensor readings. [Image: Archetype AI]The companys big selling point is that Newton can analyze output from sensors that already exist. Your phone has a dozen or more, and the world may soon have trillionsincluding accelerometers, electrical and fluid flow sensors, optical sensors, and radar. By reading these measurements, Newton can actually track and identify whats going on inside environments to a surprising degree. Its even proven capable of predicting future patterns to foresee actions ranging from the swing of a small pendulum in a lab to a potential accident on a factory floor to the sunspots and tides in nature.In many ways, Archetype is constructing the sort of system truly needed for ambient computing, a vision in which the lines between our real world and computational world blur. But rather than focusing on a grand heady vision, its selling Newton as a sort of universal translator that can turn sensor data into actionable insight.[Its a] fundamental shift to how we see AI as a society. [Right now] its an automation technology where we replace part of our human labor with AI. We delegate to AI to do something, Giusti says. We are trying to shift the perspective, and we see AI as an interpretation layer for the physical world. AI is going to help us better understand whats happening in the world.Poupyrev adds, We want AI to act as a superpower that allows us to see things we couldnt see before and improve our decision-making. [Image: Archetype AI]How does Archetype AI work? Lenses.In one of Archetypes demos, a radar notices someone entering the kitchen. A microphone can listen for anything prompted, like washing dishes. Its a demonstration of two technologies that reside in many smartphones, but through the context of Newton, sensor noise becomes knowledge.In another demo, Newton analyzes a factory floor and generates a heat map of potential safety risks (notably drawn in the path of a forklift coming close to people). In yet another demo, Newton analyzes the work of construction boats, and actually charts out a timeline of their active hours each day. Of course, physics alone cant extrapolate everything happening in these scenes, which is why Newton also includes training data on human behavior (so it knows if, say, shaking a box might be inferred as mishandling it) and uses traditional LLM technology for labeling whats going on.Each different front-end UX described above required some custom code, and Archetype has been working with its early partners in a white-glove approach. But the core logic at play is all built upon Newton. Our companies dont care about some AGI benchmark we can meet and not meet, Poupyrev says. What they care about is that this odel solved their particular use cases.Much like entire apps are now built upon OpenAIs ChatGPT and Anthropics Claude, Archetype is making Newton AI available as an API (and customers can request access now). Technically, you can run Newton from computers operated by Archetype, on cloud services like AWS or Azure, or even on your own servers if you prefer. Your primary task is simply to feed whatever sensor data your company already uses through a Newton AI lens. The lens is the companys metaphor for how it translates sensor information into insight. Unlike LLMs, which work on question-answer queries that lead us to metaphors like conversations and agents, sensors output streams of information that may need constant analysis. So a lens is a means to scrutinize this data at intervals or in real time. And the operational cost of running Newton AI will be proportionate to the amount and frequency of your own sensor analysis. [Image: Archetype AI]Tuning the lens is surprisingly simple: You can use natural language prompts to ask the system something like alert me every time theres a safety issue on this floor or notify me if an alarm goes off. But whats particularly exciting to the company is that in analyzing sensor waveforms, Newton AI has proven that it doesnt just understand a lot of whats happening, but it can actually predict what may happen in the future. Much like autocomplete already knows what you might type next, Newton can look at waveforms of data (like electrical or audio information from a machine) to predict the next trend. In a factory, this might allow it to spot the imminent failure of a machine.To demonstrate this idea, Archetype shares data from an accelerometer measuring the swing of an elastic pendulum (aka a pendulum on a springwhich is a classic way to generate chaotic behavior). Even though the model has never been trained specifically on pendulum equations or been programmed to understand accelerometers, Archetype claims that it can accurately track the swing of the chaotic pendulum and predict its next movements. Poupyrev says the same is true for thermoelectric behaviors, like we might see in electronics.By observing patterns normally ignored, and coupling that information with predictive analysis, Archetype believes it can revolutionize all sorts of platforms, ranging from industrial applications to urban planning. And for its next act, the company wants Newton to output in more than text; theres no reason why it cant communicate in symbols or real-time graphs.The claims are, on one hand, outrageously large and tricky to grok. But on the other, Poupyrev has built his entire career on building mind-bendingly novel innovations from existing technologiesthat actually work.For any company interested in Newton, Archetype is still working closely with partners to use their API. Pilots start in the mid-six figures, while annual projects range into the millions, depending on scale.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||