A City as Start-Up: Zappos and Downtown Project
Setup
Culture is to a company as community is to a city: it's about values, innovation, serendipity, participation, upward mobility, and attraction of smart startups and the creative class. Tony Hsieh is applying his successful Zappos corporate culture model to help build the most community-focused large city in the world in the place you would least expect it: downtown Las Vegas. Research has shown that every time the size of a city doubles, productivity and innovation per resident increases by 15 percent; but when companies get bigger, productivity per employee generally goes down. With this new $350 million Downtown Project, Hsieh is creating a unique hybrid of corporation, community, and city to drive productivity and innovation both for Zappos as well as the city itself.
- 2013 Festival
- Technology
Explore More
Technology
Whether expressed through systems that are easy to navigate, devices that are friendly to their users, and spaces that are pleasing to the eye, thoughtful design can break dow...
Artificial intelligence is making world-changing advances every day. But these powerful tools can be used for malicious and nefarious purposes just as easily as they can be us...
A technological future where our brain waves could be monitored and our thoughts decoded and analyzed — sometimes against our will — is not as far away as we think. But our ex...
Setting audacious goals helps to redefine what is achievable in health, medicine, and science. As we deepen understanding of the human genome, unravel the mysteries of the bra...
Artificial intelligence is clearly going to change our lives in multiple ways. But it’s not yet obvious exactly how, and what the impacts will be. We can predict that certain...
When Sal Khan created Khan Academy, he was trying to scale up the successful experiences he’d had tutoring his cousins one-on-one in math. He saw how effective it could be for...
Everywhere you look, there’s a headline about the power of artificial intelligence and how it will impact our lives in ways we have not yet imagined. From advancing medicine t...
How do we sustain growth in a volatile and rapidly changing economy? What’s the best way to foster productivity and fulfillment at work? How will A.I. change the job market? C...
The automotive industry is going through a time of profound transformation, facing internal and external pressure to electrify America’s fleet of personal vehicles. General Mo...
Can technology bolster democracy? MIT’s Deb Roy thinks so.
At the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival, we dug into some of the most important and fascinating issues of our time, from rebuilding trust in our institutions and the promise and peri...
Like all technology, artificial intelligence can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. What little federal regulation the United States has governing technology and t...
In their new book, co-authors and Stanford professors Rob Reich and Mehran Sahami argue that big tech’s obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental h...
Like Photoshop, photography, or even pigment, A.I. represents new technology for creative expression that aims to close the gap between imagination and physicality. Alexander...
Acclaimed authors and experts Annie Murphy Paul, Sheena Iyengar, and Keith Sawyer explore the multifaceted nature of decision-making, choice, and creativity. Through their uni...
The generative artificial intelligence genie is out of the bottle. When we look back 30 years from now, what will we be able to point to that we got right?
From satellite internet and autonomous taxis to the Star Trek computer and personal robots: technologies that once sounded like science fiction are becoming reality. Join Amaz...
Renowned psychologists Lisa Damour, author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, and Laurence Steinberg, author of You and Your Adult Child, delve into the complex landscapes o...
An advanced nuclear power plant is coming to Wyoming. Funded by Bill Gates’ TerraPower, it will use cutting edge technology that aims to provide safer and more sustainable nuc...
Economic uncertainty continues its reign of confusion, vexing financial leaders, regulators, and consumers with worrisome inflation and unpredictable markets. Experts weigh in...
